


Electric Sheep

by AceSparkleGirl, covertCalligrapher



Series: Electric Sheep [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Injury Recovery, Moderate Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Romance, Slow Burn, Trust Issues, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 02:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 94,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6452215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceSparkleGirl/pseuds/AceSparkleGirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/covertCalligrapher/pseuds/covertCalligrapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the crashing of the Prydwen and the leveling of the Institute, Penelope Howard returned to Sanctuary to find that Paladin Danse had left. Despite the romantic relationship between the two of them having nearly reached what had felt like its highest point, the destruction of the Brotherhood of Steel proved to be too much of a strain on their relationship for it to continue. That had been July 11th, 2288, and nearly four months later she catches a glimpse of the missing Paladin in Diamond City.</p><p>Occurs post-game following the Railroad ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Avenoir

**Author's Note:**

> hoo buddy here we go. you can find various drawings on my sole survivor on my blog, and her character page is [here](http://jellopunch.tumblr.com/fallout).
> 
>  
> 
> [EDIT: I made a little character sheet for her.](http://jellopunch.tumblr.com/post/143419216883/i-made-a-little-outfit-reference-sheet-for-penny)

Crows and other birds usually formed the undertones of the background noise in Diamond City. Their slick black bodies formed odd speckled spots on the roofs and bowed tents above the stands, their shrieking a near constant thing, noticeable only during those rare times when it felt like everyone in Fenway took a breath at once. The silence left by that temporary lull in civilization was filled in by that sharp staccato of the birds’ _caws_.

The sound had never particularly bothered her before, but she couldn’t help the way it just _grated_ on her now. The beginnings of a headache had already started and their screaming wasn’t helping. It made it hard to remember what she was looking for in particular. _I know I need fuses_ , she thought, rubbing at her eyes. _And that basketball Shaun asked for._

And then she’d turned around, taking in the new traders that had cropped up while others had moved on, and she saw him. At first she’d rubbed her eyes, thought that seeing him was the trick of a heart sick with absence, or maybe the screaming crows disorienting her, but it _had_ to be him. None of those heated dreams of him had had so much noise behind his voice, his face, his hands, but it was so loud right then.

Without another thought past _This might be another dream_ , she stalked over and slammed her rifle down on Danse’s stand with just the command of “ _Fix it!”_ before she stormed away to get as drunk as possible.

That day turned into a wash, her body definitely more alcohol than anything else as Vadim let her embarrass herself at the Dugout. Had she not saved his life months before, she was _sure_ she would’ve been cut off before she tried to fight a patron who’d insulted her height with a broken pool cue. Angrily trying to scale the liquor case had just been the icing on the cake of a bad time.

She collected her things silently the next morning, tossing her caps at him and stomping away in a fit. Safely outside of the bounds of the city, she sat down and just _yelled_ , frustration burning in her fingertips. Every time she thought about seeing him just _there_ it felt like it hadn’t even happened. It was such a populated place and he’d _left_ , it felt moronic for him to just show up in a stall. How long had he been there? It could’ve been a _month_ at least, it wasn’t like she frequented Diamond City often.

All in all, that day was a wash too. That night, as she laid in an abandoned shack on a musty mattress, she thought to check the date. _October 21st_ the flickering screen read and she could’ve laughed at the timing. _Happy 30th,_ she thought to herself, unlocking her Pip-Boy and tossing it aside. She rolled over and curled into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut against the way he’d looked just standing there behind the stall like he’d been there forever.

She made it back to Sanctuary in record time, every single movement since tossing her caps at Danse feeling unsubstantial. Few people made eye contact with her as she stomped up to her house. Shaun found her, though, and ran up, asking if she was okay when he saw the look on her face. Unsure if she _was_ okay, she pulled her son into an embrace and held him tightly until he started squirming. She felt better after that.

Life went on at Sanctuary. She repaired a generator gone haywire and sank another water pump, two traders came into town and she picked up a little toy soldier that was mostly intact, giving it to Shaun just to get the gratification of someone happy to see her. It wasn’t much, but it was what she _had_ , and it was better than dwelling on how every time she closed her eyes, the nightmares of prying the helmet off a suit of power armor she’d killed to find Danse had switched to seeing him so… _randomly_.

The dreamlike trance wore off when after a week, she was cleaning out a drawer and found his holotags, still flickering a faint blue and warm to the touch. Two burnished wedding bands glittered on the chain as well, so many memories packed onto it. Penelope swallowed thickly and jammed the chain into her pack, taking off for Diamond City so quickly she didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to anyone before she was nearly sprinting towards Fenway.

It felt like she hadn’t stopped running until she came to a stop in front of his stall three days later, out of breath and half convinced he’d be packed up and gone by the time she got there. But he was _there_ , tall and busy with a gun in the back of his workshop.

Penny knocked loudly on the counter and leaned in. “Found ya.”

They were both silent for a moment, the air unbearably _awkward_.

“It was your birthday last week,” he said, not looking up from the pistol he was fiddling with. It sounded like it could’ve just been a statement about the weather.

“I turned 30,” she said. A few crows screamed above them, the crowded alleyway Danse’s stall was in cast in quick shadows as a few birds took flight. Anger started twitching in the bottom of her guts at the way he didn’t seem to have the nerve to look at her.

“I’m surprised you didn’t have a party,” he said and the comment was so innocuous it set her right off.

The anger bubbled even further and she felt her eye _almost_ twitch. She wanted to _yell, hit him, scream,_ but she just pulled her jacket tightly around herself and slammed her items down.

“Three months of wondering where you’d went and now I can barely stand to _look_ at you.”

She didn’t give him the chance to reply, to either tell her get the fuck away from him or ask her what she thought she was doing. Instead she just walked away, her rifle and dented chest plate still shuddering slightly from how roughly she’d slammed them onto the counter.

The floor of her house was welcoming and she spent the majority of her day in there, kicking herself for thinking this would’ve gone any differently. Three months of being _gone_ , every single night stamped with either memories of how they’d _been_ before he’d left or scraped raw with fresh nightmares, and she was an idiot for thinking she could hear his voice without losing it. Maybe it was the way she regretted never telling him she loved him before he’d left. Maybe she’d just been waiting for him to say it first. It was useless to dwell on though, just _thinking_ about finding him like this worked her guts into awful knots.

She slept on the bare mattress that night, concern for her back outweighing the desire to just lie on the floor and contemplate every embarrassing thing she’d done her entire life. It was lumpy and the springs stuck her, but it was worlds better than the floor. The squeaking springs woke her up a few times in the night, but staying asleep hadn’t been a priority of hers lately.

Danse was open before eight the next morning, greeting her quietly in the cold late October air. It felt like he’d been waiting for her, eyes tired and soft.

“Did you sleep last night?” she asked. Her gun and chest plate were already on the counter, both pieces looking years better than when she had gotten them in the first place.

His eyes flicked around her face and she _wanted_ to be mad like she was the day before, but it didn’t come. There was something about seeing him looking right at her that nearly took her breath away, made her chest ache with what they used to be for each other.

“I’m accustomed to late nights,” he said finally. He pushed her things towards her and she was gripped by the odd urge to cover his hand with her own.

“You need to take care of yourself,” she murmured. She grabbed her chest plate and put it in her pack, slinging her gun around her shoulder.

It was painfully awkward just standing there looking up at him, a few birds screaming to make up for the silence. Her feet itched to either climb over the counter and kiss him or leave and just never look at him again. “I’ll… see you, I guess,” she said instead of _If you’re still here_ because she had a terribly weak will when it came to him.

“Be safe, Penelope,” he said, soft and warm and _just_ the way he’d always sounded when he’d held her face with darling concern. It was the way he’d always sounded when he kissed the back of her neck to wake her up, when he climbed out of his armor after battles to check her for wounds, when he watched her like she was the most important thing in his life.

But that had been a long time ago, and she’d overestimated her importance.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, voice low and raspy. She cleared her throat and shouldered her pack, face burning in the wake of his gentle request. “Happy Halloween,” she said softly, turning and walking away before she could try something she knew she’d regret.

She didn’t go back to Sanctuary this time. Instead, she wandered the ruins and cleared them over and over. Supermutants, raiders, ferals, the odd bloodbug that still buzzed in her head even after she’d killed it. Days went like that, and nights found her studying his holotags.

She wanted to put them down and go to sleep, but whenever she closed her eyes she saw his face, flicking blue and dull on the quartz screen. She was sure she could draw him with her eyes shut, the tired brown eyes, the stubble that always treaded the fine line between scruff and beard, the little scars and pockmarks on his skin. It was imprinted on her and made her very nearly sick with heartache.

There was nothing else to do though, so she just let her nights pass in wistful bleakness. They were spent with the holotags in one hand and either her gun or a cigarette in the other. And after maybe five days spent in the Boston ruins, she caught herself looking down at a little crack in her rifle’s stock, suddenly struck by an idea. A petty, immature idea, but an idea nonetheless.

She scrambled up and unloaded her rifle. Her hands trembled with excitement and adrenaline, sure she had to do it right then or else she’d lose the nerve. Holding the gun firmly by the nose, she took it and slammed the butt into the ground. It broke a little, then she raised her gun again and slammed it back down.

The stock of the rifle finally broke with a loud _crack!_ A few splinters of wood flew out and hit her in the face, one stinging in her eye. She dropped the entire thing and grabbed her face, cursing as she forced herself to pull the wood out of her eye. They came away mostly clean which was a relief, but her vision was watery and unfocused in the eye.

She could barely muster up the energy to be angry at herself for the stupid move. In the back of her mind she _knew_ going through all the trouble just to have an excuse to see him was idiotic, but she hadn’t felt any real sort of sanity for months now. And if anything, just speaking to him the week before had left her aching even worse than she had before seeing him again. It all felt contrived and ridiculous, but it _was_ how she felt.

When she stomped into Fenway the next morning, she made right for Danse’s stall. With the glaring injury, people either gave her a wide berth or stared, but she couldn’t care less. There was a fever in her mind, knuckles white from gripping her broken gun fiercely. Embarrassing shame burned in her guts but she needed an _excuse_ to go and see his face. A stimpak had helped her vision enough to where her depth perception was alright, but the eye was still bloodshot and puffy.

“What happened?” he asked immediately.

She hadn’t even set her gun down yet and he seemed half a step away from vaulting over the counter to inspect her. “Gun backfired,” she lied, holding up the barrel and stock.

He looked at the broken piece like he didn’t _quite_ believe her. “And your eye?”

“A few splinters got into it.” She gently placed both halves of her gun on the counter, peering behind him into the rest of the workshop. His power armor was standing slumped in a corner, impeccably clean.

Danse looked at the pieces she gave him, face scrunched in concentration. He picked up the busted stock and examined it, turning it around to look at the way the wood had buckled when she’d slammed it into the ground. “I can repair it by tomorrow.”

Penny stared at him for a few moments before nodding stiffly and walking away. Already, she was kicking herself all over again for the idiocy of the move. It was the kind of stunt children pulled, the entire act completely _high school_. She was a mother and a graduate of Cambridge, she had no business acting like an impulsive kid.

The next morning, she went to Danse for her gun. She didn't look at him as she picked in her pack for her caps so she could pay him and leave, wishing there was as much distance between the two of them as possible right then.

“No charge,” he said, waving off her caps. “Your personal safety is worth more.”

In the back of her head it felt like he’d almost added _to me_ , but she could never be sure. She knew how sick she was over him and she _knew_ he didn’t say it, but it didn’t stop the painful way her heart cracked just a little more. The insides of her ribs hurt and she didn’t respond to him before grabbing her gun and stalking away, painfully aware of the way the blue light of his holotags still showed up whenever she closed her eyes.

She took her time getting to Sanctuary this time. Anger and frustration pounded in her body, just _upset_ that he’d had the nerve to talk to her like he _cared_. Like he wasn’t the one who’d held her closely a lifetime before. Like he hadn’t _left_ her.

Every night after that little indication that he felt _something,_ either guilt or maybe he missed her, had been stamped with _him_. The dreams and memories of him with his hands between her legs mingled with the ones where he traced the scars on her skin or kissed the bridge of her nose. The nightmares fought their way in too, huge daunting suits of menacing power armor that _forced_ her to kill them and always had him under the helmet. It was terrible, awful, made her sick with such a mangled and mismatched cocktail of emotion that she couldn’t tell _why_ she woke up shaking. It could’ve been the longing in her chest or the ache between her legs or the unadulterated rage at him for leaving her.

It was probably all them.

Sanctuary held a sense of solace for her when she returned, helping her through the familiarity of knowing they were there for her. Piper found her first, hugging her tightly because she’d _missed_ seeing her, slipping her a pack of stale gum because that was how she knew to comfort. She was a good friend, kind and righteous in all of the right ways.

She opened a small letter from MacCready the postman had left in her room. He’d gotten his son and would be back soon with him. The postmark was from nearly a month ago and excitement at him returning bubbled in her chest, had her searching her drawer for the little wooden soldier he'd given her just so she could reassure herself that he was coming back. An odd kind of anxiety at not knowing where the people close to her were had always been a constant for her.

A few days passed easily, most of them spent playing catch up with her and Shaun. It still felt odd to be the mom again, but there was something endearing in the way her son looked so much like her. From the dark brown hair to the dark blue eyes, he was the spitting image of _her_ , right down to the sharp nose. The freckles that spattered his body were from his father, though, the sight of them making her wistful for times so long passed it felt like they’d happened to a different person.

Deacon found her after he'd returned from a supply run and let her know Dez was wondering what happened to her. She waved him off, knew he was only half-hearted about reporting her position. Ever since she’d leveled the Institute, the sight of a lantern made her feel sick.

Preston sent her on another settlement run and she welcomed the directness of the objective. Go to the settlement, listen to the problem, rub some raiders off the face of the earth; it was simple and easy like clockwork. Every job came with a sense that she was making irradiated life better, the savior of the Boston wastes one tato plantation at a time. She took Dogmeat with her this time because she felt oddly guilty about going alone now.

It took her nearly four days to get to them, the settlers pointing her in the direction of a group of ferals that had been killing livestock that wandered too far away from the farm. It was straightforward but dangerous, going up against an enemy that didn’t have any sense of its well-being whatsoever.

The path to the little dilapidated shanty town they’d taken residence in lead her through the ruins of another city. Numerous structures had been erected around the crumbling buildings and Penny didn’t even need to look through the scope on her rifle to know the entire setup just screamed _Raiders!_

Perhaps it was the promise of wiping raider scum off the face of the earth or a _reason_ for going back to Fenway that made her enter the crumbling complex, but it didn’t matter. Dogmeat followed her unquestioningly, eyes blinking happily at her through his goggles. It was nice not being challenged and asked how she was feeling.

The place was crawling with raiders, though most were too high to fight back. The psycho crash took a lot of them hard, barely registering someone was there before a dog descended on them and tore chunks out. At that point, the rounds she emptied into their heads felt like a mercy.

The sledge took her by surprise, though. It crashed through one of the support beams for the tin roof, mold and wood splinters exploding in the air as the head of the hammer took her in the chest. It sent her back and to the floor, choking as the air was knocked out of her chest. Fear at being finished then and there on the rotten floorboards of the raider watchtower flashed brightly in her head, made her fingers numb as she gasped and scrambled for the hunting knife in her boot. She just needed _something_ so that when he tried to crush her head, at least she could slash out and hope to take him down with her.

Then Dogmeat rocketed past in a flash of mottled browns and bloody foam, snarling and tearing into the raider. The both of them slammed and rolled into the floor howling, the arm holding the super sledge lying on the floor a few inches from her body. A few more seconds of struggle and she heard the familiar _crunch_ of the raider’s throat getting torn out, then Dogmeat loped over to her, snuffling and bright-eyed.

“Oh, you’re such a _good dog_ ,” she cooed, reaching for him immediately. He let her pull him into her crushed and cracked chest plate, the blood on her hands mingling greasy and gross red with the dirt and spatter in his fur. The relief of being _alive_ flooded through her limbs, cool and light. “Such a handsome, smart, _vicious_ puppy.”

He whined and tried to lick her face, tongue lolling out pink and rough. She didn’t fight it, too drained and high-strung on almost getting crushed to death to care about the bloody spittle and chunks of raider still stuck between his teeth. Time passed oddly while she sat there on the floor, curled around the dog while the bodies around her cooled. It was like she blinked and the sun had gone down almost entirely, the sky streaked with pink and stars glittering in the west.

The debris must’ve had time to settle while she sat there and rocked them both, because when she got up, dust moats glittered in the faint golden light from the setting sun. She halfheartedly picked through the stiffening corpses and pocketed two stimpaks, the remains of her chest plate dangling awkwardly from its straps. Dogmeat clicked softly at her heels, barking at items of interest and even bringing her a roll of duct tape. That earned him an extra belly rub that night and another can of cram.

Sleeping that night with the dog’s warm body next to her, excitement at having yet another reason to inflict herself upon Danse bubbled up in her chest. Her busted chest plate was the perfect thing to bring and it almost sickened her how _eager_ she was to show him that she was still in one piece. Or it would’ve sickened her, but _desire_ drowned out all of the rationale she ever had. At one point she’d been the sharp prosecutor and now she was a bruised mess who slept in a musty bedroll. Comparing realities had become a fascination for her as of late, and she drifted off to more dreams blocked in by giant power armor with chitinous blue plates.

Dawn found her the next morning, the crows waking her up as they screamed. She packed up and _needed_ to stop at Diamond City because her chest plate was too crushed and cracked to even stay on. Dogmeat followed her diligently, close by at her heels as they entered the Green Monster.

“How did it happen?” Danse asked, face surprised as he held up the pieces of her chest plate.

“Super sledge to the chest,” she said, rifling around in her pack for her cigarettes. The carton felt reassuring in her hands, very much a comfort item.

The pieces of her chest plate clattered as he put them back down on the counter. “You could’ve _died_ ,” he said. He sounded almost _angry_ , though curiously not at her.

“But I didn’t,” she said around the cigarette she put in her mouth. Her flip lighter clicked as she lit it, taking a heavy drag and holding in the stale smoke.

“You need to be more careful.” He started taking the pieces completely off, unhinging them from the leather straps. It was like he was afraid she’d almost died and the care it suggested made her feel almost giddy.

“I’ll tell the raiders to be nicer next time,” she muttered. She was pulled in two by the want to stay and maybe continue talking, but every conversation was always awkward and stunted, their relationship hacked to pieces. All they were left with was the small talk between people who were only two steps up from being strangers.

Her and Dogmeat stayed in her house again, his soft fur comforting after she’d washed out the matted blood and debris. She showered too, feeling fresher and less like she was liable to snap at any second. That night was alright and _regular,_ and she didn’t wake up on the floor again, still drunk from the night before. It was nice.

It took two days for him to fix her chest plate this time, and when he gave it back to her his voice was nearly a plea when he told her to be _safe_ , cover her blind spots and don’t be reckless. She snatched her armor away and stomped off, Dogmeat padding after her and following her loyally out of the gate. He never asked any questions and she was grateful to have him there as she sat down outside of the immediate bounds of the city. His tongue was warm and rough as he licked her face, whining as if he sensed her distress. She took it and just held the tears back, sick of being _upset_ over everything.

She stayed sitting there until the sun was high in the sky, then the two of them started for the feral clump. But the time the sun was almost finished setting, they’d already stumbled across three ferals and put them down. Looking at the shambling bodies and wrinkling her nose at the smell, it made her stomach hurt to think that these had been human once upon a time. Maybe she’d even known some of them.

The shanty town the ferals had moved into was a veritable minefield. All of shacks were a stiff breeze away from collapsing, and one even _did_ when she stumbled over Dogmeat and fell into it.

“ _Fuck,”_ she whispered in the wake of the clattering mess of tin and decomposing wood.

She could hear them before she saw them, a sick gurgling and hacking cough that had cold fear sliding down her spine as she stumbled to get up. Dogmeat ripped one to shreds before it had a chance to lurch for her, but at least three others fell off the low-hanging roofs and launched right for her.

They hit her at once, all of them rolling together in a snarling clump as she felt splinters digging into her skin. The ferals tore right into her, batting her around and it felt like for each one she shot off of herself, two more jumped right on. Behind the fear and panic and _pain_ , Dogmeat yelped and snarled as he was knocked around too, finally ripping one off of Penelope so she could _breathe_.

She finished the last two on her and just lied there, too tired to even push the corpses off right away. When she finally registered the warmth of the blood soaking into her clothes, she shoved them off in disgust, Dogmeat limping over to her and whining softly. For as broken as she felt, he didn’t look much better.

The dog ended up stuck with three stimpaks, Penny taking the same because she wasn’t looking to get sick or pass out. All of the injuries on them both seemed mostly superficial, aside from the internal bruising she knew was going to be there in a few hours. They still stung though, leaving ugly pink skin and mottled purple bruises in their wake.

The town was cleaned out completely after the swarm. Penny made a little shelter for her and Dogmeat, carefully propping up pieces of tin and roofing and ignoring the aching in her joints. She slept curled around him, shivering in the cold night and ridiculously tired. The floor under the little shelter kept her for the night and most of the next day until she had the will to get up and go back to Diamond City, half for that _reason_ of seeing Danse and half because if her nausea and Geiger counter were anything to go by, she should be growing extra limbs at this point.

Before entering, she sent Dogmeat back to Sanctuary. He barked and hopped up to lick her one last time before he loped away down the dilapidated streets. There was something missing as she watched him leave and she decided it was the warmth of another body next to her, the security in not being alone.

On that, she passed into Fenway and made for Dr. Sun immediately. She caught him right before closing, flashing her pack of caps and persuading him into treating her. He nearly drained all of her caps taking care of the radiation, keeping her there after he fed two bags of RadAway into her. Then he held her under observation until nearly 5pm the next day, letting her stumble free into the late autumn sunset.

It should’ve made her feel more ridiculous how quickly she ran to Danse’s stall, but she was past caring. She was beat to hell and tired and just got off of being strapped to a gurney and studied for mutations or side effects for eight hours. If she wanted to parade herself in front of Danse to show him how she was mostly in one piece, she was fucking allowed to.

His stall was dark and empty though, the chain gate pulled down and window boarded up for the night. A frown twitched at the corners of her lips, frustrated that after all of that he wasn’t even around. In the back of her mind, the nagging voice she’d developed since he’d left _told_ her that she was making more out of his little _be safes_ than was there, but she shook it off, making her way to her house to drop off the things she’d collected from the shanty town.

Her pack and armor were tossed by her workbench, forgotten almost as soon as she dropped them. With another pack of caps in hand, she locked her house back up, intent on getting so wasted she wouldn’t be able to feel the myriad of bruises and scrapes on her.

She was already picking a bottle in her head when she opened the door to the Dugout. Surprise rocked her body as she stumbled in for a drink and then saw _Danse_ sitting on a stool at the bar. Weird pity started gnawing at the anger in her chest, made her feel achy and hollow.

She wasn’t heavy enough to make the floorboards creak with how lightly was walking. He didn’t notice her creeping up behind him and she took the opportunity. “There you are,” she said, voice a rough croak.

He nearly jumped a foot in the air, clearly startled out of whatever he’d been thinking about. The chipped glass he’d been drinking out of almost knocked over as he turned, looking around at his eye level until he glanced down and saw her.

“Penelope…” he said softly, voice trailing out as he looked at her. The bourbon bottle he’d been holding _clinked_ softly as he set it down on the lip of the bar.

Her eyebrows furrowed, gaze turning away from his face to look at the bottle. “It was just a few ferals.”

“How many?” he asked. He took a step towards her and she took a step back, skin suddenly prickling with the nervousness of not having a barrier between them. “You were by yourself, weren’t you?”

“I had Dogmeat still,” she said stubbornly. _I’m used to being alone_ almost came out, but the viciousness inside of her was cut to shreds by the pure worry growing on his face.

He lifted a hand as if about to touch her and turn her around like he _used to_ when she got injured, but the hand stayed stuck in the air. When she looked at it then flicked her eyes to his face, he awkwardly pulled it back and ran it through his hair. The tension in the air only tightened and Penny shivered, body aching as she pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

“I went to your stall to bring my chest piece to you again, but you were closed,” she said just to fill the silence. It felt like the entire bar had stopped just to stare at them, but maybe the awkwardness between the two of them just drowned out the other patrons.

“I closed the gate early.” Danse leaned back against the bar and refilled his glass, grip on the bottle tight. “Business was slow today.”

“It’s fine, I just came here for a drink,” she said quickly. She waved Vadim over and pulled out a pack of caps, pointing to a bottle of vodka on the shelf.

“You’ve never bought liquor,” Danse commented as she held the new bottle.

The corners of her mouth twitched, irritation and some other indescribable emotion under her skin. Maybe her injuries were just getting to her. “My supply broke when the ferals swarmed me.”

That shut him up and she didn’t stick around to see if he’d think of some other thing to comment on. The floorboards rattled slightly as she stalked away from him, bruises on her ribs aching but she ignored them. Shoving her hurts aside had become a talent as of late, and listening to Danse try to make small talk while he looked at her, sad and worried, just wasn’t appealing right then. She didn’t say goodbye.

The floor of her house was welcoming, dust thick and choking and she felt _right_ at home on the old rug in the middle of the room. Some of the vodka splashed onto her face as she drained the bottle, but she was past caring at that point. Fatigue and pain ached in her limbs, the usual heartsickness joined by the bruises and newly-healed cuts from the ferals. It was a terrible combination and left her with a headache when she woke up the next morning, the crows screaming outside of her window.

Her joints ached as she pushed herself up, eyes bleary and unfocused. The bottle was lying next to her, the remains pooled inside. She picked it up and capped it, holding it by the neck as she walked absently around the empty house. The chest piece and sack she’d tossed down the night before were still propped up by her workbench.

Penelope sighed and set the bottle down on the bench. A dull throb had started in her head and she frowned at her items. With a sigh, she bent down and picked up her chest plate, her warped and fuzzy reflection showing through where the paint had chipped away on the scratched surface.

 _It’s not even that badly broken_ , she thought, frowning even harder at the piece in her hands. _He reinforced it to hell and back last time._

The thought to deliberately break it crossed her mind but she shoved it away. It was a creepy thing to do, and the memory of how she’d _immediately_ regretted busting her rifle for an excuse had her eye throbbing.

The house creaked, settling as she walked around the barren place. The thought to furnish it crossed her mind, but it filtered away just as quickly. In spite of how _empty_ the place was, the entire situation felt inexplicably messy to her. Perhaps it was how she’d _been_ , not even just months ago, but before she’d been frozen. She’d been particularly put-together, sharp in all senses of the word. Now, though, waking up hungover and fucked up from the night before was more often than not.

She gathered her things up and forced a bottle of water and a can of beans down her throat before she let herself light up. It felt like a reward for taking care of herself even a little, stopping her hands from shaking as she sorted through what she was going to sell and what to keep. Three cigarettes came and went and she stumbled out into the sunlight on her fourth, the stale taste not bothering her so much behind her hangover.

All the vendors looked at her oddly as she bartered in her raspy voice, face hidden by the big sunglasses she’d put on to hide the bruising and hangover. Honestly, she wished she cared more but it wasn’t like she had a _reason_ to be together. Not right now, anyway.

About an hour past noon she dragged her feet to Danse’s stall, but the gate was still pulled down, the stall clearly closed. The bottom of her stomach dropped out, so sickeningly afraid he’d _left_ again that it didn’t even occur to her that he still wasn’t _with_ her.

She yelled his name, banging on the gate with the flat of her hand. The chain link shivered from the blows and she peered in through the slats on the boards. His power armor was missing and the door leading into his room clearly locked, the inside disheveled with a few papers strewn across the floor.

“Danse?” she called again, swallowing down the sick worry bubbling up her throat. Her stomach churned and she pushed away, bending over and bracing her hands on her knees as she readied herself to throw up. With the sudden loss piled on top of the tail ends of a hangover, it was bound to happen any second.

The floor and chainlink shook behind her, her stomach rumbling and she couldn’t care less. Then something came to stand next to her, massive form blocking out the sun. Chancing to look up, she squinted behind her sunglasses and the bile in her throat and saw Danse in his power armor.

“Are you ill?” he asked. His face was creased and stern, the _paladin voice_ buried in the question.

Penny blinked and blanked out, just staring at him dumbly for a second. “I might be dying,” she blurted, immediately kicking herself for just how _stupid_ she sounded.

“You’re hungover.” Realization dawned on his face and she burned in embarrassment. His expression quickly changed to reprimanding and responsible as he looked at her.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she snapped, straightening up. She violently smacked the dust and wrinkles out of her jacket before smoothing her hair back and down, grimacing at the unwashed and gritty feeling. “I just want you to patch up my chest plate.”

She reached her pack around and pulled the piece out, holding it in both hands and looking up at him. Danse raised an eyebrow at her and she finally registered he was _in_ his power armor.

“I will inspect it later,” he said, straightening. His laser rifle rattled slightly on its clip. “I’m accompanying you on your assignment.”

“You’re _not_ coming with me.”

“You’re not traveling with anyone presently and your _safety_ matters.”

There was something in the way he said it that made her mouth snap shut. Her face flushed even further as she stared at him, clutching her chest plate. The resolution in her chest melted and she bent so _easily_ it almost made her angry. It was the shortest argument of her life and she didn’t even win it.

 _I was a better lawyer,_ she thought bitterly. “Fine. Just don’t crush me.”

His mouth quirked up at the corners and she felt the beginnings of longing ache in her chest. “I’ll watch my step.”

And that was it, some odd form of normalcy for her snapping back into place. She hadn’t _really_ realized how much she’d missed the way his frame blocked out the sun, but hearing him behind her again brought the heartache back in full force.

They left Diamond City quickly, Danse’s stall locked up safely. Penny’s heart was pounding in her chest, anxiousness that this was some weird sort of dream pumping in her limbs. Though it _couldn’t_ have been, because in her dreams Danse always _left_. But now he was stomping along behind her, the crows flying away in a screaming fit as his heavy footsteps upset the structures they were perched on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we go! I actually have the next chapter written all out but I'm gonna try to pace myself with this thing. So! Tell me what you thought here or at my [blog](http://jellopunch.tumblr.com)!


	2. Two Sides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He squinted down at her and she stared back for a moment before nervously pushing her hair out of her face. He stepped a bit closer, voice warmer than it had been the past ten days. “You seem preoccupied. Is something the matter?”
> 
> She huffed and looked away, acutely aware of how she pulled his jacket closer around herself. A few tense moments passed while she anxiously kneaded the arm of the jacket. “I want to apologize for yelling at you earlier,” she said instead of _I miss what the little parts of loving you felt like._
> 
> “It’s… fine. I understand berating you was uncalled for.”
> 
> Something in the way his mouth stayed open for a second after he’d spoken felt like he had more to say, had almost tacked something on at the end. In her head, it was like when he’d pull her in and kiss the crown of her head or the bridge of her nose. Sometimes he’d lift her and close the foot between them, others he’d just pull her close and hold her in a way that said he _needed_ to. Now though, instead he just cleared his throat while a mottled blush spread across his face.

Before they’d fallen apart, nights spent with Danse had been something bright in the middle of what felt like the darkest point in her life. He was a hopeless romantic, his hands soft and hesitant in touching her when they’d started out. It had been gentle kisses and little murmured words of adoration he’d given her as he held her closely in their bedrolls.

They’d taken it slow, Penny still scraped raw by the loss of Nate and Shaun, the rug of her life finally ripped out from under her completely. They were both at a time in their lives where they were floundering for purpose and a sense of self, grappling for what having a sense of humanity _meant_. So she’d thrown herself into _him_ , dragging her with him and exchanging their griefs. Danse had been perfectly content to let her decide where they went, the both of them just a warm comfort for the other at the base of their relationship. And it had manifested in how _well_ they’d slept near each other, the nights moving from innocent holding to hotter ones with frustrated hands over clothes neither was ready to push off completely. Those nights had had a blissful sort of predictability, the utter sense that she was _loved,_ though neither had said it.

Which was why that first night with him back was made of something _awful_. In her eyes it felt like she hated him completely, hated him like she had for those three months she hadn’t seen him, hated him like she had seeing him in Diamond City. It was a terrible way to feel because every time she chanced a look at him, it just felt _worse_. The memories of him holding her, of his soft words and the way he’d looked at her like she was the most important thing in the world bubbled to the surface and threatened to crack her wide open.

It started around the small cookfire he’d made because she couldn’t get the kindling lit fast enough.

“First or second shift?” she asked, toeing the dirt and keeping her eyes on the fire. A particularly dry piece of wood was devoured almost instantly the moment the flames licked over it.

“First,” he grunted, pulling his jacket out of his pack.

She waited for him to say something else, maybe about how he’d be _patrolling the perimeter_ or _scanning the nearby brambles for hostiles_ , but he didn’t. Somehow, the silence just made her more uneasy and she fell asleep that night feeling sick over it. The way his power armor had looked in the firelight blocked her dreams in, the dark flickering of the insectoid eyes of his helmet menacing her until she woke up in a cold sweat at dawn to the cawing of those _fucking_ birds.

Scrambling up to her feet, she hated that sharp panic in her gut that he’d left in the middle of the night and scanned the area for him. He was maybe fifteen feet off, pacing around in his power armor and nudging underbrush with his rifle. It was odd to see him doing something so… _normal_ for him. It felt like seeing a stag from across a river and watching as it went about its life, not knowing about the hunter twenty feet off.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she called, shivering in the pink early morning air.

He turned, his expression flat. “I was fine performing the entire watch.”

“You’re going to be tired now,” she said, coming closer. Frustration burned at the base of her skull; when was the last time he’d slept? Not waking her for second watch had been an idiot move and she _wanted_ to say it, but the fear that he’d just leave again kept her.

“I’m not tired,” he said and it was an obvious lie. The dark smudges under his eyes only seemed to have gotten deeper from the day before and he looked pale, distinctly _tired_. “You looked like you needed to sleep.”

“I’m not going to let you drive yourself into the ground,” she said coldly, ignoring the concern he’d tacked on at the very end.

“I am _fine_. Let’s just pull up and continue moving, we can reach the settlement by sundown if we move quickly.” He turned off and moved towards their small camp. They didn’t speak again for the rest of the day past little directions and the silent formation signals he was partial to.

All in all, it was icy and formal, the entire arrangement twisting her chest until she was irate enough to yell at him over anything.

The settlers, though, were kind and even gave them a few ears of corn from the last harvest of the season. They were grateful for Penelope taking care of the feral problem and she _needed_ that thankfulness in a way she didn’t know. They even offered her a place to spend the night and her limbs felt shaky at their kindness. With how turbulent the past months of her life had been, those little things propped up pieces of her she hadn’t been aware had fallen so far.

Danse stayed in the room with her, spreading out on the floor before she could offer him the bed. It was tense and achingly _silent_. The air caught between them was heavy with what the both of them _used_ to be, while they were stuck on the ends as strangers.

Penny lied there staring at the wall and ignoring the mattress springs that stuck her until she heard his breathing even. It had taken hours for him to fall asleep, her clock blinking 3am and blurring her vision with fatigue. Even with her recent emotional unpredictability, she couldn’t bring herself to cry over anything. She had _reasons to_ , but nothing had been enough to finally do it for her.

In favor of lying there all night feeling angry and guilty, she decided to poke at the remaining feral injuries. She kept quiet as she checked on the cuts and bruises still left on her. Her back was still tender, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. The scrapes on her knees looked puffy and infected, though, and she bit her lip till it drew blood as she cleaned them. If Danse woke up and heard her in pain, he’d either ignore her or come over and force her to let him help, and she wasn’t sure which would’ve been worse.

The next morning she woke up to Danse cleaning his gun on the floor. A bit of grease was streaked across his face, and in her tired haze she almost reached out and wiped it off of him. But then he looked at her and had the utter _nerve_ to give her a small smile that made her breath catch.

“I cleaned and inspected your rifle,” he said softly, reaching for it.

Penny blinked and held her hands out for it, body still aching from sleep. She was in an odd vulnerable state and she had to blink away the tears. The rifle was cold in her hands but impeccable; and she expected nothing less from him.

“Get your things,” she said stiffly, clearing her throat and standing up. “We’re leaving.”

They struck out early, the sun pink in the clear sky. The stars were still visible in the west, slowly blinking out as the sunrise overtook them. Danse’s heavy footsteps followed her around, shook the ground as she wandered aimlessly, nervousness and anger bubbling in her intestines.

The days felt like clockwork from there. They wandered and cleared out areas, Danse nearly crushing her with how closely he stuck to her. After every encounter he’d rush to her and ask if she was alright, hands hovering like he _wanted_ to touch her, but was unsure how. It was a bad place to be for her because _God,_ she’d do anything to have his hands on her again and pick her apart until she couldn’t remember her name. But then the other side of her felt like she’d attack him if he so much as laid a finger on her. The mixture was strange and unwelcome.

And still life went on. It was cold silences and awkward looks and fighting that ended in chilling distance. Either she’d storm off for a cigarette or he’d leave and search the area for hostiles. It all became normal to her, the way she hated him until it made her feel sick and the way she cared for him so _painfully_ that her chest hurt with it. It manifested in how she wasn’t willing to part with his holotags at the bottom of her bag, how she couldn’t look at him for more than a few minutes without getting torn between reaching up and kissing him or slapping him.

Either action would just make the entire situation _worse_. The _situation_ itself being something she couldn’t even put her finger on. She wanted him around her, near her, positively _ached_ for how they’d been, but what they were now was cold silence and guilt. Even with the frayed emotions and constant heartache, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him to leave. After everything, the nightmares of waking up to him gone still plagued her and she _knew_ she couldn’t tell him to go. As much as it hurt to keep him close and emotionally distant, it killed her to think of what it would feel like to wake up and find him missing. So he stayed, and the days bled into the nights.

Every night it felt the same, though she grew accustomed to not sleeping along with him. It felt like an effort to see who could push themselves the farthest in those tense silences. She had never slept much to begin with, but lying awake now was some painful kind of terrible. Either he took first shift right away and left her to sweat in her sleep to those haunting dreams where she woke up and he was gone, or she beat him to it and stayed awake the night through out of spite and the odd care for his wellbeing that still tugged inside of her chest. As much as she could pretend for herself that she didn’t care, his holotags were still burning a hole in the bottom of her pack and she hadn’t gotten the courage to wear them again yet.

Two days out of the eight after the settlement, it had been the rare occasion where they could both rest at the same time without being afraid of getting mauled in their sleep. Those nights had by far been the worst. They were awkward and just worked to show the way their relationship had crumbled right at the base. One of the nights she woke up to him sitting on his bedroll, not looking at her and she had to wonder what she'd said in her sleep. The other she just lied there, listening to him try to sleep until she heard his breathing even.

The want to just _hold_ him like they’d been before sat in her arms like lead and coaxed those warm memories to the top of her mind. They’d been something so much _more_ than what they were now, more than a few tense words that cut the space between the radio and hostile encounters. It had been him smiling whenever she saw her, her running her fingers through his hair, him murmuring how much he cared as they slept wrapped around each other.

They had been so much _more than_ , that now she felt like _less than_ wasn’t enough of a way to describe it.

“We’re almost to Sanctuary!” she called, turning a dial on her Pip-Boy. It had been perhaps two weeks since she’d seen her son and she… missed him. She was still getting used to playing the mom again. “Another three days and we should be good.”

The ground shook as he stomped closer to her, peering down at her map. “That’s the shortest route,” he said, pointing to a cluster of trainyards.

“We’ll be _tripping_ over ferals.” She lowered her arm and took a step away from him.

“Killing a handful of those creatures would be doing the Commonwealth a favor, on top of cutting a day off of our travel,” he said as he straightened up. Danse rolled his shoulders and adjusted his grip on his rifle. The fat sun behind him did odd things to his edges, had her looking away to clear her mind.

She swung her pack around and reached a hand in, fishing for her cigarettes. Coming up with the pack and a lighter, she tapped one out. “Fine, whatever,” she mumbled, not in the mood to argue. With one of the cigarettes between her lips, she muttered _Do what you want_ under her breath just to console herself as she lit it.

Turning to look at him, she took a drag and held it for a moment. “Something wrong?” she asked, noting his wrinkled expression.

“That’s a disgusting habit,” he said. He had the nerve to look _disappointed_ of all things.

“I thought you’d finished riding my ass about it months ago.” She took another drag and blew it out through her nose, starting to walk towards the route he’d pointed to.

Heavy footsteps followed her, uncomfortably close. “The risks aren’t worth‒”

She groaned loudly, effectively cutting him off. “ _God,_ just shut the fuck _up_ for once, Danse.”

Incredibly, he did. The silence that followed was frigid and tense but it felt like she’d won something. Sure, there was guilt at treating him that way, but that was the way they’d _been_ making the lump in her gut heavier. The way they were now very nearly hated him when she wasn’t looking at him and didn’t feel… _anything_ at snapping so easily.

Then again, there’d been a time between them where she’d very nearly loved him, and treating him like he was nothing made her feel sick.

“ _Danse‒”_ she started after an hour of silence and the guilt thickening to a brick, an apology on the tip of her tongue, but she was cut off by a shrill beeping.

She almost thought it was a landmine somewhere before the back of his armor hissed and the fusion core popped out, the yellow cannister steaming in the dirt.

“I’ll put a new one in,” she said softly. Clearing her throat, she stepped behind him and pulled herself up on the latch, rifling around in his pack. Coming up empty, she knocked on the crest of his armor. “Are you all out?”

“I assumed you had an extra.”

“I did _two days_ ago, but it just got spat out.”

“Then no, my reserves are empty.”

She hopped down and adjusted the strap on her gun. “Looks like you’re outta power then, big guy.”

“Fantastic,” he said, almost a grumble. “We need to keep moving anyway, we’re wasting daylight.”

“You’re okay to walk the rest of the way hauling that thing with you?”

“I don’t have a choice.” He started moving forward, leaving her there as he clunked ahead into the waiting brush.

To his credit, he moved well in the suit when it wasn’t powered. No doubt the constant maintenance to the frame helped with mobility, but even so, the suit was hundreds of pounds of steel and ceramic. About an hour after the sun had finally gone down, she called an end to their march out of sheer pity for him.

They had come to the first in a long line of service stops for the old rail line after walking for nearly six hours. This one was familiar, and she could remember the ferals she’d found lying amongst the dirt and oil drums nearly a year before.

“We’ll stop here for the night,” she announced, dropping her pack down on the lip of the station dock.

Danse came to a creaking halt and looked down at her. “It’s not late enough, we should cover more ground before resting.”

She crossed her arms and gave him a withering look. _Just take the damn bone I’m throwing you_ , she thought, eyeing the sheen of sweat on his face. Even his breathing was harder than usual, exertion bearing down on him under the heavy plates of steel. “I figured you’d need to rest after hauling half a ton of metal around all day,” she said, shivering a little as she pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

“I have the energy to continue.”

“ _Fine_ , then _I’m_ tired,” she snapped, turning to her pack for a smoke. She listened to his armor hiss as it disengaged while she lit her cigarette, breathing in the smoke and holding it for a moment. When her lungs started to protest, she blew it out, making a face at the stale taste. A shudder ripped through her again and she cursed at the weather and her thin jacket. Now that they’d stopped walking, the frigid air cut through her easily.

The dry grass behind her crunched as Danse came closer. Wind ruffled through the trees, the last of the leaves still clinging before winter coming free and breezing past. Oddly, he didn’t say anything and she almost turned to ask him what was wrong, but she felt him drape something over her shoulders. Feeling it in surprise, she identified it as his bomber jacket.

She swallowed thickly and fought the ugly tears that almost welled up at the little gesture. All those old feelings for him bubbled to the surface and she struggled for control of her voice as she turned to thank him. He was already walking off though, rifle in hand as he went to _secure the perimeter_.

Penny scrubbed at her eyes and put the jacket on fully. The thing swallowed her completely and billowed comically, but it was warm and she could feel the wool lining tickling the back of her neck. As she grabbed her gun to search for ferals or bloodbugs or bloatflies or _something_ , a blush crept up her chest. The damn thing even _smelled_ like she remembered he did, like power armor grease and sweat and the nylon of his flightsuit. Fresh tears almost came again, but she wiped them away before they could slip out and she started bawling her eyes out over him yet again.

 _You’re just stressed out_ , she said to herself, pushing at a bunch of brambles with the nose of her rifle. She tossed the butt of her cigarette into a patch of dirt and ground it under her toes. _You miss Shaun and those feral bruises still hurt like a bitch._

“I don’t see any ferals!” she called to him from across the tracks. She couldn’t see him and she squinted across the distance.

“Check again!” he answered, closer than she’d thought. “It’s best to err on the side of caution when it comes to securing a location of hostiles.”

“I don’t see any, and I’ve been through here before,” she grumbled, half-heartedly kicking an old oil drum.

“I’d rather not get mauled to death by ferals,” he said, voice suddenly so _close_.

“Jesus Christ!” she yelped, heart pounding. “Don’t fuckin’ sneak up on me like that!” she said with a slight tremble in her voice.

He squinted down at her and she stared back for a moment before nervously pushing her hair out of her face. He stepped a bit closer, voice warmer than it had been the past ten days. “You seem preoccupied. Is something the matter?”

She huffed and looked away, acutely aware of how she pulled his jacket closer around herself. A few tense moments passed while she anxiously kneaded the arm of the jacket. “I want to apologize for yelling at you earlier,” she said instead of _I miss what the little parts of loving you felt like._

“It’s… fine. I understand berating you was uncalled for.”

Something in the way his mouth stayed open for a second after he’d spoken felt like he had more to say, had almost tacked something on at the end. In her head, it was like when he’d pull her in and kiss the crown of her head or the bridge of her nose. Sometimes he’d lift her and close the foot between them, others he’d just pull her close and hold her in a way that said he _needed_ to. Now though, instead he just cleared his throat while a mottled blush spread across his face.

Penny swallowed thickly and tapped her rifle on the oil drum again just to break the silence. At least four things to say came to mind, the loudest one being _I miss you_ , but she heard a sick gurgling noise and stopped herself.

“Did you hear that?” Danse asked, face creasing in concentration. He rolled his shoulders and held his rifle up, scanning for the source.

“I _told_ you there’d be ferals,” she groaned, holding her gun in both hands.

He made a hand sign that said _quiet_ and she grimaced. Open handed, he tapped the side of his head, right over the top of his ear, and she almost snorted. _Listen._ What were the ferals going to do, have an attack plan?

They walked around to the back of the trainstop shack. Danse crouched and peered over a dumpster, motioning for her to keep a tight formation. After three minutes and the gurgling hadn’t happened again, she was frustrated enough to believe they’d just imagined the noise.

Toeing at the dry grass, she sighed and he turned to her. His eyes were full of concentration and she rolled the sleeves of his jacket up just for something to do. She opened her mouth to tell him to just let it go, but his eyes widened and he swiped an arm out, knocking her to the ground. All of the air rushed out of her as she slammed into the hard dirt, had her wheezing as she rolled and saw the feral before it pounced right onto Danse.

He rolled with the feral, another climbing out from behind a derelict train car and launching at him before she could even get up. Scrambling to her feet, she shot at a third that soon followed, the body skidding to the ground as its legs ripped free. The air smelled like burning ozone and rotting meat, the screeches and gurgles of the ferals drowning out Danse’s yelling.

Fear flashed brightly in the front of her mind as she saw one of the ferals on him latch onto his arm and rip free. She started to run forward in a panic, vision filing down to one dreadful pinpoint. Before she’d even cleared half the distance, though, one barrelled into her from behind. She rolled with it, the feral firmly latched onto her right wrist and _chewing._ The pain hardly registered through the adrenaline and fear, her body running automatically as she fought for a grip on her rifle and shot nearly four rounds into its chest. It let up, pulling off of her in pain, and gave her the opening to jam the barrel under its head and finish it.

She cursed and slid the body off of herself, standing and stumbling over to where Danse was fighting off two fresh ferals, three others lying dead a few feet away. One was still dragging itself towards them, legs gone. She shot it, hands shaking and slippery with blood. The other two she didn’t even think to shoot for fear of missing and hitting _him_. The butt of her gun worked well enough, the ferals lying in a wet, twitching mess while Danse shoved them off.

“Are you alright?” Danse asked immediately, pushing himself up. He sagged forward as soon as he was standing and she steadied him, heart pounding even harder.

He was a _mess_. While she was sure she didn’t look great, he looked beat from Hell and back. The front of his shirt was stained with blood while the rest was dirt and grass stains. Claw marks covered him, and a particularly nasty set on his neck was bleeding at an _alarming_ rate.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she said, trying to be gentle as she helped him limp to the shack. “ _You_ look like shit though.” It was a weak attempt, but it was all her mind gave her that wasn’t blind panic.

They hobbled to the shack and she helped him inside. There were crates and broken bits of radio strewn around, but no ferals. Danse went heavily to the ground while she ran outside for their packs, remembering to grab his rifle. Back inside, her hands had a slight tremor to them as she helped clean him off, ignoring her own injuries in favor of his. She wasn’t sure if it was the proximity or the intimacy inherent in checking him for wounds and disinfecting, but her skin felt embarrassingly hot and stuffy. To add to it, Danse seemed unable to meet her eyes, though that could’ve been the exhaustion and pain.

The whiskey she used to clean him was nearly half gone by the time she was done. Four stimpaks and his entire shirt torn into little strips to staunch the bleeding, and he was as good as he was going to get. The rest of the cloth she soaked and used to bind the throbbing bite marks on her arm, shoving his hand away when he tried to look at what she was doing.  Wanting to put them both more at ease, she helped him into a new shirt from his pack. Just to check, she snapped her Pip-Boy onto his arm and waited for it to tune to him.

“Shit,” she murmured, peering at the screen. Danse let out a soft _hmm?_ at her and she saw him looking at her blearily, tired from fatigue and blood loss.

“You’re irradiated,” she said, unlocking the Pip-Boy and putting it on the desk. “I’m surprised you aren’t glowing,” she added lightly, though guilt gnawed at her guts.

She spread his bedroll out on the ground for comfort and helped him onto it, back propped up against the wall. He watched her hang the bag of RadAway on a rusted nail and gently coax a bit of the liquid through the tubing and needle before sticking the back of his hand with it and taping it down. In a fit of unwarranted tenderness, she cupped his face and brushed her thumb over his cheek, chest _aching_ for how they’d been. But this was how they were _now_ , and she had to go for a smoke to calm her nerves.

Outside, bugs chattered in the distance. She stood right before the doorway to the shack, looking out over the tracks and half-burnt feral corpses, a cigarette between her teeth. One smoke soon turned into two, then three as she avoided going back inside and looking at him again. It wasn’t even a _meaningful_ kind of emptiness in her chest, it was just the shaky aftermath of adrenaline and worry.

Diamond City Radio drifted out from inside the shack and she dreaded going back in. She was still wearing his jacket, though with a few new bloodstains on it, and every little shift she made reminded her that they’d been so _close_ to being overwhelmed today. The way he’d tossed her aside played in her head over and over again, the memory of him rolling around with the ferals chewing on him knocking around inside her skull. It was a rock in her shoe, a pain behind her eyes, a sickness in her gut that almost made her want to throw up so it’d just _leave_.

A fourth cigarette was soon lit, the rough sparking of the flip lighter comforting in an odd way. She managed two drags before she tossed it onto the cement and ground it down, sick of the taste and sick of having him being so physically close but an entire life away.

She stepped into the doorway, small form illuminated by the tiny lamp she’d lit while cleaning him off. He blinked up at her, eyes still hazy, and she spotted the whiskey bottle, now empty, along with two crumpled snack cake wrappers. It was almost funny to her but she swallowed down the frayed laughter and boldly walked up to him, standing with her feet planted firmly on either side of his outstretched legs. Pushing away one last fit of clarity in her stew of guilt and emotional distress over his leaving, she dropped down into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him as tightly as she dared.

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled to the bandages on his neck. She fisted her hands in his shirt just to get _closer_ , feel more of him and his skin and the man she’d missed so much it’d nearly made her sick.

It took a moment for him to tentatively hold her back, his grip weak, but gradually getting tighter the longer she just stayed there, rocking them both slowly while the RadAway dripped quietly in the background. The bite marks on her throbbed as she held him even harder, gently nosing the bandage covering the claw marks on his neck. He smelled like whiskey and blood and _familiarity_ , her body aching from holding him in a way she didn’t know she needed.

He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose, face in her neck. “I can’t let anything happen to you,” he murmured, holding her more tightly.

Penny swallowed thickly, eyes almost watering. “I’m alright, Danse.” _I can’t lose you a second time._

“I’m glad I’m here now.” Another deliberate tightening of his arms, this one accompanied by his nose burrowing even more into the crook of her shoulder. “I was there, you’re _safe.”_

It was clear he was drunk from the whiskey and blood loss, but it was still good to hear that some part of him regretted all of that time apart. She couldn’t answer; the words just wouldn’t come. All that came to mind was to just _spill_ it all to him, but if Penelope was anything, it was stubborn.

She sat there holding him well into her legs cramping just because she didn’t want to break the quietness of the moment. The radio played softly in the background, the timelessness of the entire situation lulling her into a calm place. He was alive and warm in her arms, his own grip on her weak but she could still feel his breath on her skin. Her fingers played with the little hairs on the back of his neck and she could feel his thumbs rubbing small circles into her under the jacket. It was gentle like all of their old moments had been, their bodies tangled together in quiet comfort.

When his grip slackened completely and his breathing fell into a thick, steady rhythm, she shook him gently and got up. The air felt different as she stood, Danse blinking up at her, gaze bleary. Nothing felt particularly _fixed_ , but there was no denying how relaxed her joints felt. Even with the stiffness in her legs.

She helped him stand so he could relieve himself. While he was outside she scrambled for her bedroll, thumbing a corner of it before spreading it out next to him, about a foot between the two. He limped back in, eyes widening in surprise at seeing her standing in front of her bedroll in her T-shirt and long johns. She helped him lie down on his sleeping bag, his jacket bundled at the head for a pillow, then lied down on her own. They were at an eye level, something inexplicably _upset_ in the way he looked at her. The sadness in his tired brown eyes nearly cracked her heart down the middle.

He fell asleep after a few minutes, exhaustion overtaking him again while she lied there. After maybe an hour and she was still wide awake, she reached a hand out and gently covered his own, her thumb brushing softly over his knuckles. Old scars and tiny creases pebbled under her fingers and she swallowed thickly at the little touch. Every single _I miss you_ she’d wanted to say to him ached in her fingertips, every _I made myself hate you_ stuck in her wrist. If there was anything he did to her, it was confuse her.

Dawn found her asleep, though only for a few hours. She let Danse sleep until he woke up and waited outside for him to get himself ready, pretending she didn’t hear his groans of stiffness and pain. It took him two cigarettes to limp into the doorway, jacket zipped up as far it would go.

“We’re staying here for today,” she said, turning away from him to look out over the dead trainyard.

“Travel would be unwise,” he agreed.

She took her last drag and blew it out, crushing the butt under her heel. “How are you feeling?” she asked as she jammed her hands into the pockets on her jacket.

“I am… alright,” he said slowly, shifting a little. She noted that he was favoring his right leg. “If I’m being honest, I’m slightly hungover.”

Penny let out a snort, smiling and finally turning to look at him fully. “More than 90% of that bottle got into you one way or another.”

“You did the right thing, but I shouldn’t have been so careless.” His brow furrowed, continuing to look down at her for a moment before turning his head to the sun rising in the white sky. “It’s going to rain and we can’t cover more ground because I left my power armor.”

“Stuff the armor,” she huffed. “It’s my fault we ran out of fusion cores, I forgot to buy them after we met that trader. Damn guy even had two.”

“It’s passed now, we just need to wait for my ankle to be able to bear weight again.”

“Do you need another stimpak?” she asked. They had maybe… 12 left? Though he’d taken four the night before, another one wouldn’t be a bad idea for how badly he’d been batted around.

He shook his head. “The ones you gave me should still be working. Bones take more time, as I understand it.”

“Well I’ll leave a few with you just in case.” She turned back to the trainyard, taking a deep breath and letting it out through her nose.

“Are you going somewhere?” The way he asked it made it sound like he’d never considered the idea that she’d think of going somewhere right then, that maybe she’d just be content to stay in that tight shack with him the entire day. There had been a time in their relationship where that idea would’ve thrilled her in at least five different ways, but now it just made an odd sort of guilt grow next to the frustration at their distance.

“There’s wild mutfruit around here,” she said as she stepped into the doorway for her pack and rifle. “The season hasn’t changed yet so there should still be a few good ones.”

“No,” he said with surprising strength. “There are ferals inhabiting the area and you’re too vulnerable to go alone.”

“Well, see, that’s where you’re wrong, Danse.” Penny hiked the pack up on her back and snapped her Pip-Boy on, wincing a little as it tuned to her. The dry grass crunched when she hopped off of the concrete platform onto it, turning to look at Danse. “I can do whatever I damn well please, and you have absolutely no say in the matter.”

The air was tight as he looked down at her. It was smothering and thick enough to choke until Danse dragged a hand down his face, eyes weary with concern. “Please be safe, Penelope.”

She forced the lump in her throat down, looking away from his face. The words he’d whispered into her neck the night before, drunk and exhausted, surfaced and her skin burned in shame and affection for him. The man had used to be completely transparent with her, and that murmured relief was _just_ like they’d been. Perhaps it had just been the whiskey and blood loss to make him say it now. Or maybe it’d been why he came with her again, why he’d been so bent on covering her from every angle, the fear of losing her that gnawed at him to make him say it.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said softly, reaching her hand as far as it would go and brushing her fingers over his knuckles. “You have food in your pack, and I left you with a few books I found.”

He nodded at her and she walked away, fighting the burning urge to see if he watched her leave. The hairs that stood on end on the back of her neck said _yes_ , but that part of her that wanted the thought that he could still care for her to just stop said _no_.

 _I just need to clear my head._ she thought, carefully stepping over the gnarled roots of a tree that was ready to die. _It’s easier when I can’t see him_.

And yet, he stayed on her mind.

The area was still dotted with wild mutfruit bushes, though the fruit left on them was stunted and sour for the most part. The end of the season was near, and winter breathed in every rustle of the trees. The early frost that accompanied was still crystallized on some of the lumpy fruits she found, too, glittering faintly even with the thick, clouded sky. Still, she took them because the fresh taste was worlds better than boxed apples or the sickeningly sweet cakes Danse liked. There was something refreshing, even with the minor radiation.

The skeletal trees and newer, living brush felt welcoming to Penelope then. She stayed in the thin forests and derelict rail yards for hours, trying to lose the nagging thoughts at the back of her skull. A shallow part of her stayed away longer and longer just to get the vain satisfaction of knowing Danse was in the shack worrying about her. Another part kept her legs restless and wandering as the sky darkened, wind making her shiver and miss the warmth of his embrace.

Only when the first few fat raindrops pelted her did she march back to the trainyard. The rain had started in earnest by the time she had gotten back, the sun having set hours ago and the sky an angry, flat gray. The suit of power armor by the shack was shiny from the rain, more menacing in the dark and unnaturally tall. She gave it a wide berth, half afraid of it chasing after her and forcing her to kill it like in her nightmares.

Danse looked up the moment she climbed into the shack, darling worry in his face giving way to relief at seeing her. “I was getting worried about the inclimate weather,” he said, pushing himself up and walking to her. There was still a slight limp in his step.

She set her pack down on the desk and shrugged. “It just started when I was on my way back.” Danse’s hand came into her view as he leaned it on the edge of the desk, and she noted how alert he seemed. “You’re walking better, how’s your ankle?”

“It should be sufficient for travel tomorrow.” He watched her unload her pack, picking up one of the mutfruits and rolling it in his hands.

Penny hummed softly to herself as she fished around for her cigarettes. A slight tremor had started in her hands and she could feel the shortness in her temper reaching up, but it was still calm for now. Perhaps it was the relief of coming back to the shack and finding him still there, the sight of his face quelling a worry she wasn’t aware she still carried.

“Did you just stay in here all day?” she asked softly, hopping up to sit on the lip of the desk.

He moved to lean next to her, shifting his weight off of his right leg. “I inspected our weapons and rations, then examined the structure of the shack.”

“And?” she asked, her lips twitching up into a smile. She fiddled with her pack of cigarettes, tapping one out.

“It’s sound enough for a few nights, but is not a viable point for long-term occupation.” He took a deep breath and started pulling the mutfruit apart, Penny watching the juice run down his exposed forearms out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, we’ll be leaving tomorrow.” The click of her lighter nearly echoed in the room, the sound of her cigarette catching fizzling in the wake of it. “Hopefully the rain lets up.”

“And doesn’t freeze. Ice would be… unfortunate.”

“You can break your other ankle to match, then.”

“I’m more worried about you,” he murmured, separating the fruit by its lobes. “You’re liable to freeze to death before we reach our destination.”

She blew out a puff of smoke, staring at a bucket he’d placed under a leak in the ceiling in favor of him. It was heartache that made her not want to look at him, guilt and anticipation and nauseous anger bubbling together in her guts. “Not all of us are hulking radiators,” she muttered. The smoke disappeared quickly and she took a big drag and held it, the pain of not breathing feeling like a penance for _something_.

“You need a better coat, perhaps something lined with fur. I will inquire with the next trader we come across for one.” He offered part of the fruit, hand stained purple.

Penny breathed out and took the fruit he offered her, making a face at it. “I never liked boysenberries,” she muttered. Still though, she ate it and loved the fresh taste of it, even if the sour juice almost made her teeth hurt.

Danse chuckled softly, taking a bite out of one of the pieces. “Is that a prewar fruit?”

“We had bushes behind my house when I was growing up,” she said quietly, putting the butt of her cigarette out in the drip bucket. She jammed her thumb into one of the over-sized lobes of fruit, feeling the large seed in the middle. “We had money and could afford the nice things.”

“You’ve never liked discussing your life before the war,” he said.

“It… wasn’t great. But you know that.” She took a deep breath and ripped another piece, popping it into her mouth and grinding the seed between her teeth. “I’ll admit, I was spoiled and I miss a time that most other people never actually _had_.”

“It’s understandable to feel wistful for the past.” A purple-stained hand hesitated for a moment before resting on her thigh.

Heat immediately flooded her face, her eyes flicking to see him looking at where his hand was touching the faded denim of her pants. She cleared her throat and stayed still, hoping he’d take his hand away and they could just ignore this, but he didn’t. After a few seconds, she covered his hand with her own, the feeling of his big hand in her small fingers so _familiar_ and completely missed.

His thumb rubbed slowly over her fingertips and she swore she heard him sigh. She gave him a squeeze and shuffled a little closer to him, risking the awkwardness for the proximity. Out of everything she felt for him, she missed him above all else.

“We should eat,” she said softly, almost stretching to kiss his shoulder because she _used_ to love doing it. Instead she kept her eyes on their hands, heart pounding in her chest as it pumped longing and embarrassment through her. “We’ll get sick if we just have the mutfruit.”

He hummed in agreement, though neither moved for a few seconds. Then Danse stood and stretched, Penny flushing even further as she watched his back pop and flex. They sat close together, Penny emptying the drip bucket and coming back in to see Danse already picking her rifle apart to clean it. It was a familiar sight to see, and the way he went about it made her more relaxed. This was something she knew, a constant of being with him.

They ate quietly that night, neither sure of what to say. Just to fill the silence, Penny complained about the sourness of the fruit, the stale cigarettes, the canned taste of the cram they ate for dinner. It was mindless chatter, but it was better than risking them devolving into the kind of desperate awkwardness only strangers could manage.

After they ate, she snapped her Pip-Boy on him for a check up. Dissatisfied with his radiation level, she made him take another bag of the RadAway, propping him up against the wall and sticking him. She managed to resist the urge to brush her thumb over his cheek this time, mind unclouded by worry and snapped adrenaline.

She sat down next to him, head leaned back against the wall and listening to the rain pelt the roof of the station. There was a little less than a foot between the two of them, Penny shivering from the cold December air. It only took a few seconds this time before Danse reached for his jacket and gently draped it over her legs, Penny too choked up to thank him past sliding it on and zipping herself into it.

There was a small silence filled by the rain and her radio playing softly. It was warm and comfortable, the first time in _months_ she felt something like what they’d been. In her heartsick haze bundled in his jacket, she closed the distance between their bodies and tentatively leaned her head on his shoulder. Danse tensed up immediately, but gradually loosened, his free arm holding her against him. It was a gentle grip, the kind that calmed and reminded her of all those nights spent holding each other.

It was over too quickly though, and she stood to help him with the RadAway bag, pulling the needle out and taping the back of his hand. Her body felt unnaturally light, limbs anxious and gut fluttering because she _felt_ for him, even still after the grief he’d put her through. She cared about him more than anything, it felt like, and it pulled her into pieces.

She passed out first that night, the past few evenings of no sleep bearing down on her until she went out. The last thing she saw before she fell asleep were Danse’s tired brown eyes watching her softly, his hand gently pushing the hair out of her face. Then again, that might have just been the soft dreams about him creeping in and mingling with her consciousness before it pulled her under.

The quiet between them wasn’t so terrible when they left the next morning. Danse had let Penelope check the wounds on him, many of them already fresh pink scars. He’d grabbed her wrist and checked the bite, expression upset as he saw the infection and re-cleaned then dressed it for her. Had it not hurt so much, she might’ve kissed him right there just because of the darling concern on his face and in his tired eyes.

That day was just quiet moving, Penny zipped into his jacket because he _worried_ for her and she loved the way it enveloped her. The wind still made her legs cold and her hair blow into her face, but the bomber jacket cut it from her chest and arms, the smell and warmth a constant reminder of how much he meant to her. Little broke her out of her trance save for Danse’s announcements of enemies or areas of interest.

Two feral encounters, and one pack of bloatflies, and the day was cleared. They hadn’t covered as much ground as they would’ve normally, but she called it quits and found another shack so that he’d _have_ to sleep. And just the way he fell heavily into his bedroll without eating said how tired he actually was. She stayed awake for much of that night as well, legs pulled up under her chin as she watched his face crease in pain and an indescribable sensation as he slept. Before, she would’ve combed her fingers in his hair and peppered his face with kisses until he woke up, but now her hands were tied with knowing that wasn’t _them_ anymore, despite the soft touches of the past few days.

The frustration at her situation just built inside of her, her hands itching to be on him again but her mind keeping her in check. The next morning she kept to herself, silent and cold and he gave up trying to talk to her after she ignored his first two questions about her wellbeing, and then the follow up one about her silence.

 _Trust me, pretty boy, it’s best if I just don’t start_ , she thought as she hiked her pack up and trudged ahead of him. His jacket was still on her, though it exacerbated her mood more than it protected her from the cold then. Danse stayed silent but close, the worry for her keeping him close to her heels.

They came to a little cave outcropping that night, Penny stopping them in a fit and throwing her pack down in anger. She ripped his jacket off and tossed it at his power armor, the suit catching and draping the leather awkwardly until Danse removed it and shrugged it on, concern and frustration in his face. Rage was simmering in her fingertips and she was bursting for a fight, wanted to push him the wrong way so they could go back to the cold silences and being strangers.

And of course Danse gave her the opportunity; she’d always thought he didn’t know when to stop talking.

“Are you hurt at all?” he asked, sitting in front of the small fire he’d lit. A can of cram was in front of him, along with an ear of corn she’d given him from the settlers. “You’ve been distant all day.”

Penny stiffened at having been spoken to so directly. She was still bent over her pack, searching for her cigarettes and lighter. “Excuse me?” she asked dully, straightening with her carton in hand.

“I feel like there’s something wrong that you aren’t telling me.” He straightened up and had the _nerve_ to look her in the eye as he said it.

“You’re kidding,” she deadpanned, tapping a cigarette out.

He didn’t answer, just watched her as she looked at him incredulously.

“Incredible,” she snorted, bringing the unlit cigarette to her lips. “You’re _serious_.”

“I’m worried about you,” he said simply and he seemed _completely_ unaware of the ways she wanted to just scream her frustrations at him.

“I’m mad that I have to _look at you_ every day,” she started, thumb dragging over the gears of her lighter. “I’m mad that you think you can just _ask_ why I’m upset, and I’m _fucking pissed_ that you _think_ you can just come with me again and… _touch me!”_ The last part was almost a shriek, and she took a moment to just breathe as she composed herself.

“But it doesn’t matter,” she continued with the cigarette between her lips, holding her lighter up and cupping it against the wind. It caught and she held it between her fingers, exhaling. “Because my life still had to go on but I had to stay not knowing what the fuck had happened to you!”

He opened his mouth to say something, firelight looking odd in the highlights of his face, but she cut him off.

“I don’t want to hear anything! I know why you left, I know I hurt you, but _God_ , I didn’t have a choice!” The anger flared even _hotter_ in her chest, scalding the insides of her lungs. She let out a shout and kicked her pack as far as it would go, listening to it land heavily on the other side of the fire. It was pure _rage_ inside of her chest now, unadulterated anger that made her hands shake and head light. Her cigarette fell to the ground in the mix, smoldering and blinking out and she just didn't _care_.

Danse stood up and she saw his hands in fists, arms shaking. It was rare to see him get mad like this, but even then it didn’t _look_ like anger. “What do you _want_ me to say?” he asked, words tight and tone clipped.

The corners of her lips twitched a little at his tone and the exasperation it implied. She wanted him to _yell_ at her so she could fight back, have a reason to get mad that wasn’t entirely about what he _did_ to her. The dreams, the _nightmares_ , the pure heartache she’d endured for not doing what he’d wanted, she wanted _something_ for it.

So it came to a point, and the words that had been clawing at her for months just bubbled right out.

“It’s just that after _everything_ I did for you, I thought I’d come _first!"_

The echoes of her shout faded out, small body shaking with adrenaline and the rush of letting every pent-up emotion out at once. Danse was just looking down at her, face an odd mix of angry and hurt. His fists weren’t clenched anymore and he had the utter nerve to make her regret saying it, the _nerve_ to make her remember why him leaving had hurt so badly.

“I need another smoke,” she mumbled, hands shaking and anger drained. She wanted to take the words and shove them back in down her throat but they were still hanging in the air and she _knew_ him. He acted on a strange mixture of impulse and the need to obey and it manifested in his unpredictability with emotional confrontation.

He didn’t speak as she turned and walked away, patting her pockets for her cigarettes and lighter. Maybe if she got far enough away, he’d remember what exactly had been going through his head when he’d heard of the Prydwen crashing and go for a repeat. It wasn’t fear that vibrated inside of her chest at the thought of him leaving again, but it was something close to it.

Maybe twenty feet off from their little cave of a campsite, she stopped and lit up. There was a thin scrap of forest in front of her, the chirping night inky black in the shivering trees. Penny just focused on the stale tobacco and tenderness of her bruises, bent on keeping her mind off of how she’d screamed at him. It wasn’t like she didn’t believe what she’d said, but there was a certain kind of regret that accompanied the washy guilt for screaming at him for making _that_ choice.

The wind that blew through cut her again, screamed in her ears and made her shake. For what felt like the thirtieth time, she resolved to get a proper coat again and pulled her jacket tighter against her body. It deafened her and almost put out her cigarette had she not cupped the end to shield the embers.

It stopped her from hearing the way Danse crept up on her. She had just been standing there, shivering and hunched over, and then his arms had wound around her from behind and pulled her into the curve of his body. The warm, solid mass of him made her jump, the tightness of the embrace saying more than he could if he talked all day.

She stayed stiff in his grip, feeling his breath on the back of her neck and face in her hair. When the wind died down and her cigarette was nothing more than a smoldering thing forgotten and fallen, she pried his hands off and turned around. Neither said anything as she pressed her face into his chest, his arms closing back around her and _holding_ her. The open flaps of his jacket sealed her in and the pure _longing_ she felt with her arms around him and face in his chest made her choked up.

The tears came without warning and she just let them happen, body shaking and throat tight as she cried softly into his shirt. They swayed slightly as they stood together, both scraped emotionally raw. His body might have shook along with her, but she couldn’t be quite sure. It was overwhelming and a relief, his body heat and scent familiar, frame relaxing into him as she cried out every ounce of grief in her body. Just the little act of him holding her first felt like enough right then, just the slightest indicator that he felt _something_ for her that she didn’t have to assume or coax out.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into her hair, holding her more tightly. They were still swaying, the feeling remarkably like when she was a child and rocked for comfort by her father.

She took a shuddering breath and pressed her wet face even further against his chest. “I missed you so much,” she said, words muffled. His heartbeat was right next to her, grounding and steady. “ _I’m_ sorry.”

He took a deep breath and she felt his exhale in her scalp, the warm rush of air making her almost tired. “I’m here now.”

It _almost_ felt like he might have kissed the crown of her head, but it was more than likely just her imagination filling in the gaps. She didn’t answer him, but she kept holding him so he’d hold her. When she almost fell asleep in the embrace, he broke off and gently cupped her face for a moment before walking back to their camp together. Months ago, he would’ve kissed the bridge of her nose during that gesture, but now every form of affection was truncated by a broken relationship. That he acknowledged it was enough, though, right then.

They fell asleep quickly, Danse’s tired brown eyes dark in the cold night. She reached out for his hand and held it as a comfort for them both, his eyes closing as she gently rubbed her thumb over his knuckles. He dropped off soon after, the feeling of looking at him and wanting to be held and _loved_ like she used to painful. It was a bruise all along the inside of her chest, an injury in an awkward place that made every breath ache with the memory of his lips, hands, the little gestures of affection. Sleeping while watching him came difficulty, but it _did_ , pulling her under to blissfully warm dreams built out of her better memories.

Even with his apology and warm body next to her, she still awoke right before dawn, sweaty and dazed and _convinced_ he’d cut his losses and left her again. But he was snoring softly a foot away, face scrunched up slightly in what could’ve been a bad dream. She sighed in relief and gently brushed her knuckles over his cheek bone, chest _aching_ with affection and distance. For as much as she was _angry, disappointed, sick,_ she was even more _upset, longing, caring._

They pulled up swiftly, Penny’s hands shaking slightly with anticipation and cold, stomach aching and nauseous. Sanctuary was only a few hours away, and she was half afraid of what her _friends_ would do when they saw a seven-foot-tall shadow lumbering along next to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally gonna post this later in the week but I'm not going to be around to do so, so I'm just going to do it now. So, yes! Chapter two, any comments or questions I'd be happy if you shared them!


	3. Same Coin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a few minutes, she softly brushed her free hand over his arm. “You know, I was afraid you’d leave again,” she murmured quietly, tired and safe in his embrace.
> 
> “I’m here now,” he said immediately. He’d said it so much over the past few days, it was almost enough for it to sink in completely for her.
> 
> “When someone’s friend threatens you with a gun twice in the same day, normally you don't stick around.” A slight smile crept onto her face and she chuckled, covering his hand and lacing their fingers together. “I’m glad you’re here.”
> 
> He took a deep breath and let it out into her hair. Her scalped warmed quickly, then the heat dissipated just as fast. “I _can’t_ leave again, Pen.”

The Cambridge Police Station of Penelope’s college days had been a bustling place filled with officers in riot gear and at least seven war protesters locked up at any given moment. It wasn’t uncommon to walk in and see several people just barely out of their teens asleep on the benches and floor of the cells. They were rich kids who were filled with a strange kind of guilty anger, thrown out of their soft households and forced to see the food lines and resource struggles. Often, Penny herself had woken up on the inside of one of the jail cells, 20 years old and not strong enough to fight and do any damage. Once, it had been her first time meeting Nate, though it would be years later that she realized that the gangly ginger kid had grown into the kind-hearted soldier she’d met while he was on leave.

Now, though, the building stood as a half-collapsed coffin. As Penny approached Sanctuary, the sky just barely tripping the border between late afternoon and evening, she couldn’t help but let her mind wander towards it.

The last time she’d seen the inside it’d smelled like burnt ozone, blood, and _death_. Corpses were scattered around, the air stuffy with the rotting bodies and laser burns. It had been eerily silent, the dust and foundation still settling from the Railroad’s attack not even twelve hours before. Penny had dragged Deacon back then, not telling him why.

She pushed the door open gently, standing in the broken doorway as early dawn filtered in behind her. The hot morning light burned against her back, lit up the dust moats she’d disturbed in glittering pinks. Nothing inside moved, the stiff bodies choking the air with their smell. Penny picked up a broken brick and tossed it into the room.

The distinct sound of a laser pistol went off, burning a hole into the wall to her left. Deacon almost moved forward, gun ready, but she pressed a hand against his chest and made a motion for him to be quiet. One red eyebrow rose up behind his sunglasses, but he stayed.

“Haylen?” Penelope called, creeping forward to peer around the alcove wall. Haylen was lying on the ground, small streaks of blood and debris left behind as she struggled to pull herself to the back wall.

The scribe had what Penny would describe as a _kind_ face. Friendly, she had happy eyes and a slight smile that was always present. Now though, covered in blood and soot, she had a rage that overshadowed what had even been there when she’d harbored Danse from her.

“Just _go_ ,” she groaned, closing her eyes and turning away as she continued to drag herself.

Penelope ignored her. “Let me get you out of here, you’ve probably got an infection already!”

Haylen just groaned in response, right leg bloody and dark. Penny almost tossed caution aside and stepped completely in, but Deacon grabbed her arm and pulled her back behind the wall.

“She isn’t dead?” he asked, eyebrows disappearing into the brim of his hat.

Penny looked back into the room. Haylen was now struggling more, bloody marks on the floor from where she’d dragged herself. Penelope faced Deacon again, not lowering her hand. “She didn’t need to die.”

“She’s _Brotherhood_.” He rolled his shoulders and peered around her into the room. “You know, the people that tried to _kill us_.”

“There’s no Brotherhood _left_ , Deacon. Just help me get her out of here.” _No Brotherhood left_ , she thought. The acrid smell of the Prydwen as it’d burned was still caught in her nose and she fought the bile that threatened to creep up her throat.

“I could tell Dez you let her live,” he said slowly, like he was giving her the option to doubt his friendship, consider if taking him here had been a _bad_ thing.

Even if it had been though, she knew she couldn’t move Haylen by herself. “She won’t believe you,” Penny said, her _lawyer voice_ on. “You’re a liar, remember?”

Deacon looked at her for a moment and Penny could nearly feel the strain on the air between them, the small noises of pain Haylen was making in the background keeping her in the moment. Then Deacon shouldered his rifle and stood up straighter. “I’d almost forgotten I never tell the truth. Thanks for the reminder.”

Penny’s mouth squished into a line but she didn’t respond to the cool anger in his voice. There wasn’t anything left in her at that point that felt even a little bad for using him to help a friend. That she’d been the one to tackle the friend and shoot her in the leg was incidental.

She turned back to where Haylen was now limply propped up against the wall. “If you let us carry you out of here, we’ll bring you to a settlement and fix your leg,” she said, creeping a little out from behind the wall.

Haylen fired a shot over her head, the wall behind her popping and sizzling from the round. “Leave me alone!”

 _A warning shot_. It had been way too far above her head to be anything else. “I’m not leaving without you! We’ll get you out and then you never have to look at me again.”

There was a painful seven seconds of deliberation on Haylen’s part. Then her laser pistol landed by the edge of the wall Penny was still half-behind, skittering to a stop by Deacon’s feet. The force of the throw was a good sign: clearly she wasn’t as close to death as Penny had feared.

Haylen glared at Penny the entire time she was tending to her. Penelope’s hands shook as she unraveled the makeshift bandage around the Scribe’s leg, sniffing at the wound and not at all surprised to find it infected. Deacon patted Haylen down for more weapons or just anything really while Penny doused her leg in whiskey and rebound the lanced wound. To her credit, Haylen didn’t cry out at all during it, but perhaps she was just too drained for pain.

Deacon carried her the way Penny showed him to, the way a soldier carries his wounded fellows. It was a prewar technique that the Brotherhood had taught her, and it was almost funny to see Deacon lifting Haylen that way. Almost.

They made it to a settlement on the edges of the University campus before noon. It had been one Penelope had helped months before and they welcomed Haylen readily. Just to give them incentive to keep her safe while she healed, she handed them a pack of caps as payment. Besides, it would only be a few days before she was completely healed, what with all the stimpaks Penny had stuck her with.

It wasn’t a surprise when Haylen told her to just get away, and Penny didn’t take it to heart. It was expected, understandable, and completely unavoidable. Remembering Haylen had been in the police station had happened at the last moment when they’d busted in. Tackling her to the ground and shooting her leg, telling her to just stay _down_ had been a last-second decision. They were _friends_ , and she’d listened and lived.

Deacon was the same kind of friend, though perhaps even closer now. He knew her reasons and knew that Penny had really only been half present since the Brotherhood had stormed the Railroad. It was what kept him on her side, she suspected. _Friendship_ , she figured. It was telling enough what side she had chosen, that they at least had that.

But that had been four months ago, and Penny hadn’t known just how _least_ even friendship was.

“Sanctuary’ll come into view just over that hill,” she said, letting her rifle hang limply as she pointed.

Danse stomped next to her, breathing just a little heavier than normal. “Why have you stopped?”

She shuffled awkwardly in place and adjusted the strap on her rifle. “I need to tell you something.”

His face creased with worry, armor creaking sickeningly as he bent down to his knee so they were eye level. “Is something wrong?”

The inside of her chest ached painfully at the look on his pretty face. She sighed and brought a hand up to gently cup his face, her thumb brushing lightly over his cheek. He flushed violently at the touch and she brought her hand back, turning away towards the setting sun. “Nothing’s _wrong_. I just never actually… told anyone that I’d found you.”

“You’re afraid of how they’ll react to seeing me.” His words were accompanied by the squeaking of the frame as he stood, the weight of the plates fighting the unpowered pneumatics.

“Well… _yeah_ ,” she said. “There were more than a few threats thrown around.” _Mac said he’d cut your balls off if he ever saw you again._

“I’m not afraid of threats.”

“I’m not saying you should be! Just don’t expect a warm welcome.”

Danse just nodded and Penny looked at him for a moment before sighing. There was nothing she could do about it now, her hands shaking slightly and stomach roiling. She tapped a cigarette out and lit it for comfort.

Sanctuary came into view quickly after they crested that hill. Penny crushed her second cigarette against a rock and readied herself, acutely aware of Danse stomping beside her. His heavy footsteps were comforting in an odd way, a reminder that he was still beside her and her fears of abandonment hadn't yet been realized.

As they approached, the two settlers she’d placed at the barricaded watchtowers waved her in. Past those gates, she saw a large clump of people gathered together. She called out and saw MacCready turn out of the group, face lit with a bright smile as he fought to hold the squirming toddler in his arms.

Then his face fell and Penny’s legs froze. She threw out her arm to stop Danse, eyes narrowing at the look of confusion, then realization on Mac’s face. A few more people turned to look and nervousness began boiling with the nausea in Penny’s gut, body acutely aware of the tension in Danse.

“Holy _shit_ ,” she heard someone to her left and a bit further away say. It sounded like Hancock.

Deacon lifted his sunglasses and Preston seemed to realize his mouth was still open and closed it. MacCready thrust his son into his arms, Preston juggling the boy awkwardly. Mac took two steps forward, fumbling for his rifle as his face turned a violent shade of red, _rage_ clear. As Cait stumbled out of a house into the evening, Mac started shouting.

“What is _he_ doing back here?” he yelled, bringing his rifle up and leveling it at Danse.

Penny jumped in between the barrel and Danse, holding her hands up. “Put the gun down!”

“I want an answer!”

“You’re making a _scene!”_

Mac’s face twitched a little bit, eyebrows drawn in anger. It had gone silent, the few people that had been murmuring stopping completely, the empty airspace filled by the chirping insects. Mac seemed to snap back and realize it, looking from her up to Danse and she was positive he was glaring back. The slight hum of his laser rifle powering up went off behind her.

MacCready cleared his throat, and when he spoke it was calmer, but he didn’t lower his rifle. “I thought you’d skipped town, Danse.”

“He’s been travelling with me,” Penny cut in before Danse could answer. It would’ve been a disdainful _I don’t have to answer to you_ that would’ve just caused more problems.

Mac snorted. “Yeah, _why?”_

Penny straightened up and hardened, puffing her chest out indignantly. “That’s none of your business.”

“It _feels_ like it is.”

“It _isn’t_. Put the gun away,” she said, reaching for the barrell.

“Still wanna shoot him,” Mac muttered, lowering the gun. “Might do him some good.”

She heard Danse breathe in to reply, but she whipped around and glared at him. Her eyes said _Don’t even think about it,_ and he shut his mouth. Turning back to MacCready, she grabbed the nose of his rifle and pushed it completely to the ground. “You’re _not_ going to hurt him. Do you hear me?”

The corners of his mouth twitched and his frown deepened, but he nodded his head. “Loud and clear, _Boss.”_

The way he dragged out the last word felt like a punch in the gut, but he was just angry.  _I’ll deal with it later_ , she thought, telling him to get lost. The entire situation made her limbs feel shaky and it wasn’t about to get easier.

After Mac took his son and stormed off, the shame parade started. Settlers scattered while the bolder ones stayed to watch her various companions chew her out or bombard her with questions. Preston was reserved and cool towards Danse, asking Penny a few worried questions about how she was doing before she finally made him leave. Curie was very much the same way, though she was happy to see Danse back. She was ever the ray of sunshine, bright and optimistic.

Then Cait came and almost made a scene like MacCready had. Her turn at berating was short lived before she she got fed up and left, leaving Deacon and Hancock to double team. Deacon was made of questions and surprisingly snide remarks, and Penny was almost afraid Hancock was going to try knifing Danse, but all he left were vague threats that she was 100% positive he would follow up on if Danse so much as breathed at him wrong. To Danse’s credit, he remained mostly silent through it, though that could’ve been the glares Penny shot at him whenever he breathed in to make a remark. Still, he managed to control himself.

Nick was on a supply run, so she was spared his comments, but Codsworth got her as she went to her house for her son. It was a quick few words that remarked on Danse’s sudden reappearance and how happy he was to see him again. She’d been _dreadfully down_ since he’d left, and Codsworth was glad to see her doing so much better. She swallowed down the tightness in her throat and left him to washing the outside of her house again while she called for Shaun.

Danse’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head at seeing her son. The confusion was satisfying and she almost didn’t want to answer his questions, but eventually Shaun left to go and play with the other kids in the town and she was left sitting on her porch while Danse paced in his newly recharged power armor.

She explained her son briefly in the smallest details, and Danse took it. He seemed able to fill in the rest himself and commented on how much like her he looked. Her throat tightened painfully at that and she fought to say his freckles and the bump in his nose were his father’s. Danse mentioned his eyes, a dark and muddy blue, and she had to agree on that. Shaun’s smile was hers too, though unmarred by the ugly claw scars and not as vicious as hers could be. There was a lot of Nate’s kindness in him and it nearly pounded her heart into dust.

The evening quickly became night, the hours ticking by as she busied herself around the settlement. She left Danse at her house because she had trouble looking at him then, and the distance would do her good. She suspected he wanted to be alone for a little while too, and she couldn’t blame him. He was solitary by nature, though she would get back before he was left alone with himself for too long. There was a fine line between alone time and the anxious anticipation of loneliness.

Eventually, she gave herself a break from work and her friends, stopping for a cigarette. She walked around behind the houses, out of sight of anyone still out when it was nearly 1 am. As Penny rounded the corner of a shack, tapping out a smoke, she spotted a flash of a red creeping behind one of the derelict houses. Stopping and squinting at the shape in the dark, she snorted as she recognized it.

“I see you, Pipes!” she called, bringing her cigarette to her lips.

Piper hesitated, half behind a piece of wall with a few shreds of siding still clinging to it. Penny lit her cigarette and watched her shuffle around in the dry leaves before creeping out. “Oh hey, Blue! I didn’t see you there.”

“I’m easy to miss,” Penny said easily, carefully stepping around in the dark. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, you know. Around,” she said weakly. Piper fiddled with the edges of her gloves and it was too dark to really tell, but Penny was willing to put money that her face was flushed.

She took another drag and raised an eyebrow, squinting at her friend. “Deacon said you started running as soon as you saw me and Danse get in.”

“Everything he says is a load of shit,” she muttered. “Figures he has something to say about me, though.”

“Why run, Piper,” Penny said flatly, straight up.

“Well…” she started, eyes shifting nervously. She rubbed at the back of her neck and took a deep breath. “I saw Danse in Diamond City two months ago.”

Penny blinked and just stared at Piper, mind suddenly blank. “Excuse me?”

“I just got nervous seeing you coming back with him and I panicked, and I ran because I didn’t want—”

“Oh my fucking _God_.” Penny opened her mouth and felt her fingers twitch a little bit, anger bubbling up with irritation seeping in. “You _knew!_ Does Nick know too?”

“No! I only saw when I stopped by to see Nat, and Nick hasn’t been to the city in months.” Piper sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, looking at a few crumpled leaves that breezed past.

“And you just never told me?” Penny remembered her cigarette and took a heavy drag, trying to suppress the nausea that had been growing in her gut all day. She blew it out and dragged a hand down her face. “Holy shit, Pipes, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you _omit_ information.”

“I didn’t want you to be even more upset,” she admitted. “I didn’t want you to go to Diamond City and shoot him either,” she added, eyeing Penny carefully as she tried to defuse her anger.

She couldn't even tell _who_ she was angry at. Would it have made a difference if Piper had told her? She probably would’ve just run straight to Diamond City and made a scene. Maybe she would’ve slapped him, or broke down and cried. Both options made her grimace, and as she looked at Piper nervously describing how she’d put their friendship _first,_ it felt like it didn't matter anymore. To be honest, she wasn’t really angry at all. It was over with now and grudges had never been her thing.

“Longest secret you’ve ever kept,” Penny muttered, taking a final drag of her cigarette before it was finished. She crushed it against the siding of a house and let the butt fall to the ground. “I guess it was you being considerate.”

Piper gave her a crooked smile and fished around in her pocket. She came up with a pack of gum, handing it to Penny. “Here. My usual type of consolation, then.”

Penny almost thanked her, suddenly choked up, but a gunshot cut her off. Both women jumped at the way it cracked right through the air, shattering the silence. They’d barely reacted, either to scramble for weapons or dive for cover, before a shrill scream started. Danse’s booming voice echoed it and Penny looked at Piper for a second before they both broke into a sprint for the street.

Anxious worry had started gnawing at Penelope’s gut, made her feel sick. The broken chunks of pavement slid underfoot as she looked around for the source of the yelling. It had sharpened into what sounded like MacCready shouting, curses starting but breaking off before he finished. Spinning to look around the bend by the big tree, she saw Danse in his power armor illuminated under the floodlights and flickering string bulbs. Running closer, she saw MacCready on the ground holding his shoulder, a few settlers that had already been awake crowding around.

“What the fuck happened?” Penny asked, pushing past a few people to stand by Danse. She looked at MacCready, then back to Danse. “Did you shoot him?”

“He fired at _me_ ,” he said, glaring down at Mac. “The round deflected into his arm.”

Penny bent down to help put pressure on the wound, looking at MacCready. “Did you seriously shoot him,” she said, voice tired.

“Prick deserved it,” he said around his teeth, squirming from the pain.

“I don’t give a fuck! You’re _not_ going to hurt him!” she snapped, Mac yelping when she pushed just a hair too hard on the hole. She told him to shut up and turned to Piper. “Get Curie, I don’t want him to bleed out in the friggin’ street.”

Piper ran off and Penny told the small crowd that had gathered to beat it. She told Danse to get away too, regretting it immediately when his face creased up and he stomped heavily away. The thought that maybe getting shot at would push him into leaving again crossed her mind, but she shoved it away and pulled Mac to stand. She walked him over to her porch and made him sit while they waited for Curie to come.

“I should’ve expected this, right?” Penny asked harshly, still trying to keep his blood mostly inside of him.

“I said I’d shoot him if I ever saw him again,” he mumbled. She bent closer to examine him and he looked away nervously.

“You’re drunk,” she announced. “Frickin’ spectacular, Mac!”

“Hey, don’t blame me for getting mad! That a— _jerk_ is the one you should be yellin’ at.” All of his past threats scrolled through her head and the anger faded quickly. It was replaced with a strange kind of touched that he’d taken her heartache so personally, but also a sick feeling in her guts at the thought of Danse getting hurt.

“Shooting at someone in a full suit of power armor was a bonehead move,” she said softly, shoving her nausea aside and looking away down the street. Piper was coming, Curie in tow.

He just grumbled in response. Penny didn’t dignify him with an answer, instead just waiting for Curie to come over and briefed her on the situation. Piper went off to bed and Curie opened her bag and went to work digging the bullet free and disinfecting.

MacCready complained the entire time. _He’s a constant bitching machine,_ Penny thought as he whined that the forceps hurt or the needle was too sharp. In a serious situation, he knew when to shut up, but drunk and in the mood to complain, _boy_ did he indulge himself.

“What did you _think_ was going to happen?” she asked eventually, tired of listening to him whine in pain.

“I dunno.” He shrugged as much as he could in the situation. “I never got far enough to think about that.”

“You idiot, you woke up the whole fuckin’ town with this stunt,” she muttered, trying not to look as Curie dragged the needle through his skin.

“I just got shot, can you chew me out later,” he muttered, cradling his head with his free arm.

“I’ll just wait til you’re sober then,” she offered, gently hitting his uninjured shoulder.

Mac groaned, squirming a little when Curie tied the sutures off and dabbed at the blood that had seeped out. “Great, then I’ll be able to remember it. Not so tight!”

“You don’t want to bleed out,” Curie said, padding the wound and wrapping it. “The alcohol in your system would do it.”

She popped the cap off of a stimpak and jammed it into his shoulder, Mac yelping again and looking away. “Hurts like a bitch,” he mumbled.

Penny fished in her pockets for her carton, hoping a smoke would calm her stomach. “Watch your fucking language,” she said around her cigarette as she flipped her lighter and brought it to her lips. Mac groaned but Curie smiled.

She rubbed a clean pad over the prick from the stimpak. “Anesthetic could’ve killed you—”

MacCready groaned, cutting her off. “I get it, the drinking.”

“Stop complaining,” Penny said. She exhaled and felt marginally better, but her stomach was still in knots. “You can go back to sleep, Curie, I’ll get him to bed.”

She nodded and packed her things up, making for the small shack Penny had built for her to hold her lab. It wasn’t much, but the look of pure joy on her face could’ve made flowers sprout. Curie was a good person to have around.

“Alright, get up,” Penny started, crushing her cigarette underfoot. “I’ll walk you to your place, your son is probably scared.”

He got up slowly, feet unsteady and slow. “He probably didn’t wake up, kid could sleep through anything.” Even as tired and beat as he was, he still smiled fondly as he spoke about his son.

At his house, Duncan was asleep in Mac’s bed, dark hair sticking every way and curled into a little ball. Mac toed his shoes off and climbed in next to him, pulling him close and dropping off almost immediately. The baby made little huffing sounds at being moved, but didn’t wake up. Looking at them, Penny felt her heart clench a little.

 _I miss Shaun_ , she thought dully, ignoring her nausea again and walking out of Mac’s shack. Inside of her own house, Shaun was just falling asleep again on his bed. She brushed the hair out of his face and pressed a kiss to his forehead, his eyes opening for a moment before she told him to go back to sleep.

Penny wandered out of his room, shutting the door gently so he didn’t wake up again. Turning around, she almost jumped out of her skin.

Danse’s suit of power armor was standing in her living room, the matte blue plates menacing in the flickering dark. A new fusion core blinked in the back of it. She laughed a little once the initial shock faded, walking up to it and knocking on it softly. If it was still here, so was Danse. He wouldn’t leave again without it, and the confirmation that he was still about was comforting.

The metal was cool under her fingertips and she pressed her forehead against it, stomach nearly sick again. It had been bothering her for the past few days, but it felt like everything that had happened today just set it off to noxious churning.

She groaned loudly, smushing her nose as she turned her face more into it, sweaty and sick.

“Penelope?” she heard Danse ask, his footsteps coming from her living room.

Her stomach made a loud squelching sound and she groaned again, waving him away when she felt him try to turn her.

“Are you sick?” he asked, nervousness creeping into his voice. “Something’s wrong, you look pale.”

Her stomach clenched again and she managed to groan _Bucket_ through the nausea. He scrambled for one, quickly coming back from her kitchen with the one she used for dirty water. She got it just in time, jamming her face into it and not caring about the horrible smell as she puked out everything she’d eaten for the last 10 years.

She retched a total of seven times, slumping to the floor after the first two. Danse’s hands held her hair back, touch gentle as he sat on the ground with her. It was an uncomfortable position and she felt like shit, but the little gesture was so _good_. He still cared, he was there, he was helping.

Thirty minutes after she finished, Danse made her stand. She still held the bucket for comfort and backup as he lead her to her sofa. He made her sit down on the lumpy cushions and snapped her Pip-Boy on. When it finished tuning to her it showed she was radsick, the levels present dangerous for someone of her height and weight.

Danse made her take a bag of RadAway, jaw tense and expression tight as he fed the needle into her hand and hammered a nail into the wall to hang the bag. He stood awkwardly in front of her, seemingly suddenly unsure of what to do next, but Penny opened her arms in tired expectation. Her limbs were heavy and she felt drained, throat raw and body just _tired_.

The old and abused springs in the couch protested when Danse sat down and pulled her into his lap. It was an awkward fit, him crossing his legs so she could sit in the dip of his thighs, but it was warm and close and she’d _missed_ him. The heartache of the past few days hit her again and she leaned her head back, almost tall enough to rest it on his shoulder completely. His arms closed around her, careful of the tubing in her hand, and held her gently. She felt his chin rest lightly on the top of her head and she sighed, her eyes slipping shut as she listened to the RadAway drip quietly.

After a few minutes, she softly brushed her free hand over his arm. “You know, I was afraid you’d leave again,” she murmured quietly, tired and safe in his embrace.

“I’m here now,” he said immediately. He’d said it so much over the past few days, it was almost enough for it to sink in completely for her.

“When someone’s friend threatens you with a gun twice in the same day, normally you don't stick around.” A slight smile crept onto her face and she chuckled, covering his hand and lacing their fingers together. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He took a deep breath and let it out into her hair. Her scalped warmed quickly, then the heat dissipated just as fast. “I _can’t_ leave again, Pen.”

“You haven’t called me that in months,” she said, grin growing.

His chest vibrated as he gave a very small chuckle. He cleared his throat and his tone was back to serious. “How did your radiation levels become so high?”

“Ferals, probably,” she said, shrugging. “I never checked after all of the trainyards. Should’ve.” That it had come to her vomiting hadn’t been the best sign. Any further and she might’ve gotten sicker, maybe an infection or bleeding gums. The nausea had subsided for now, but that was just the pleasant lull between bouts.

“You have to be more careful.”

“Says Mr. Reckless.”

“ _Please,”_ he said instead of just bantering with her. There was broken fear and anxiety and _worry_ in just that one word and it shut her up. He squeezed her closely and it punched her right in the chest. _I can’t lose you, I missed you, I’m sorry_ , it all came to the surface and she was sure she could’ve cried if she had been a person for tears.

But she wasn’t, not really, not after months of holding it in and then crying herself sick over him. She squeezed his hand tightly and he sighed, relaxing behind her more. His body almost formed a curve around her. The position was old and familiar, a comfort he’d always loved. Right then, the idea that he’d missed what they’d _had_ more than she did crept up and almost winded her. It settled in her chest and her stomach started aching again.

Danse handed her the bucket when she asked for it. Nothing came up but she still retched, gut contracting painfully. He held her hair back and softly told her she’d be okay. It was so _gentle_ and so completely him. He was sensitive and hadn’t known how to show affection but he took to it so well. This man was soft in all the right ways, holding her like he loved her.

The nausea came back three more times, the RadAway bag long finished. It was just the residual sickness at that point and it drained her completely. In a better state of mind, she would’ve walked back to her bed, but she just stayed curled in Danse’s lap. Exhaustion overcame her and she fell asleep in his arms, waking up the next morning in her bed with Danse slumped in a chair, asleep.

She woke him up gently, embarrassed and still tired, but she wanted to show him that she hadn’t died in her sleep or whatever other horrible things he thought would befall her. He looked at her closely, checking her for any other signs of sickness, but she was clean. The relief in his tired eyes made her chest ache and she found she couldn’t look at them that long without being overwhelmed.

Outside, that day was relatively normal. Danse stayed in her house and she didn’t see him as she ran around and fixed what had fallen apart while she was gone. New settlers were assigned jobs, she put disputes down, she oversaw new beds and home foundations being laid. With a spare hour, she helped Sturges repair all of the generators and she found an ancient holodisk player that a trader brought through. She gave it to Sturges immediately, begging him to fix it because if anyone could, it was him.

Preston grabbed her later in the day and gave her a new settlement to help, this one close by enough that it didn’t make her groan. It would be a quick run and she was glad for the busyness it gave her. Too little to do left her alone with her thoughts, and there was hardly a worse place for her to be as of late.

When it was dark enough to go to bed but not late enough for her to _want_ to sleep, she went back to her house. She played with Shaun for two hours before he started yawning and she put him to bed, unsure of what to do next. Danse was still in her living room fiddling with his power armor and she wasn’t sure what to say to him now. She settled for going outside to work on the pile of junk pistols she was always meaning to fix up and sell.

He came outside eventually, disturbing the peace she’d achieved just listening to the sounds the night made. He placed her tools back on the workbench wordlessly. She jumped away as his fingers grazed her hand, body language tense and awkward. Unsure of what else to do, she stepped away and fished in her pockets for a smoke.

“Preston gave you an assignment, correct?” he said in an attempt to fix this space between them.

“A settlement in the east needs help,” she said simply, dragging her thumb over her lighter.

“How long will the journey be?”

“Probably just a week round trip.”

Danse cleared his throat, and looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she saw the heavy blush on his face. “Who will be accompanying you?”

 _You. It’s_ always _been you._ “I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll just go alone.”

There was a lull in the bland small talk while they both just thought of something to say. Danse picked up the gun she’d been working on and tested the weight in his hands while she just practiced how long she could hold her breath.

“I’m already going to outlive you,” he said eventually, cutting right through the silence.

She tapped her cigarette ashes off and turned towards him. “Excuse me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as he leaned on her workbench.

He put down the gun she was fiddling with earlier and wiped the grease off his hands. “The cigarettes.”

“A raider will probably kill me before then,” she muttered, turning away to look back out over the streets. Two settlers on night patrol walked past, shotguns in hand. She took a drag like she needed to prove a point, but it still tasted like shit.

“Not if I can prevent it,” he said and he sounded so _resolute_ it caught her off guard. He’d always been bent on protecting her, covering her from every angle, but the way he just said it so plainly made it feel like he _planned_ on being around that long. Around long enough that being a synth would matter.

Penelope took another drag just for something to do so she didn't have to answer. Her face burned, a strange mixture of anger and embarrassment under her skin. The smoke in her lungs didn’t feel so satisfying right then and the stale taste got to her more than usual. She exhaled in a huff and stomped on the smoldering butt.

“We’re leaving at dawn,” she muttered, storming past Danse and back into her house. Standing there in tense silence just wasn’t appealing and she’d rather waste time over him while she tried to sleep than waste time over him while standing in the cold.

Sleep was riddled with him again, the usual nightmares coupled with ones that bordered on fever dreams. His hands between her legs or him cupping her face, their bodies as they rocked together or just held each other. It was a hot haze that made her body achy when she woke up. Frustration burned in every part of her body, made her rough as she woke Danse up to get ready. He’d been asleep on the couch, and the loud _bang!_ of her slamming her heavy pack down on the side table started him awake.

She felt bad for it, of _course_ she felt bad because she was a messy mixture of emotions for him. She wanted him wholly and completely, wanted things to just go back to what they’d been but they _couldn’t_. That wasn’t an option now, and it made her nearly insane.

Penny left him to get ready, hesitantly brushing her fingers against his forearm for reassurance before she went back to her own room to prepare herself.

Packing for the trip went by quickly, emptying out her pack and just replacing the essentials. Stimpaks, Rad-x, RadAway, gauze, pain pills, a few extra changes of clothes, a brush; they all went in automatically. Then her fingers grazed something metal and warm, grabbing it from the pile on her bed and pulling it free.

She swallowed thickly as she looked down at the holotags. Her thumb brushed over the flickering quartz screen, a small crack in the glass from when she’d kicked her pack in the heat of the moment a few nights before. There was a slight guilt at seeing the way it distorted his face, but she couldn’t bring herself to put it down. Without a second thought, then, she grabbed the chain in both hands and slipped it around her neck, quickly pushing the tags inside of her shirt before she could think better of it and put them back at the bottom of her bag. Then she hiked her pack up her back and walked out into the early morning sun, acutely aware of the how the familiar weight of the chain put something tight inside of her at ease.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo buddy it's 6 am and im exhausted. let me know what you thought!


	4. A Penny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly, almost violently, her limbs felt weak and head dizzy. Her hand came down, arm heavy from it all. It was embarrassment at being that vulnerable, crossing that line of wreckage between them and _missing_ him enough to give in and gently graze her fingers over his rough skin or thick hair. It was embarrassment at loving the way her name sounded in his mouth, the way he said it so simply when nothing he said ever just _was._ It was embarrassment at being glad he’d come _back_ and letting herself get tangled up like this.

Even from a young age, a persistent kind of loneliness was engraved in Penelope. It manifested in different ways as her life went on. It was a staggering fear at the loss of more of her family, of being alone in the dark, of not being able to protect her loved ones; but the most consistent form of it being that _need_ to be a part of something. _Rebel without a cause_ had been what her mother had called her until she’d died, but the words always stuck onto Penny. She _was_ a rebel at heart, fighting every battle like it mattered to her personally.

And they always did matter personally, _everything_ mattered to her personally. Never content with sitting quietly alone, whenever she was left with just herself, she fell into a state of anxious melancholy. As a child, her parents would distract her from it or she’d have friends stay over as often as possible. Sleeping in her own bed alone made her feel prone and anxious, too many places in her room for monsters to hide and no one to help her fight them. After meeting Nate, he’d developed a way of combating the surly bouts that he couldn’t push away because they were entirely different things in daylight.

He was a funny man. Kind, happy eyes with a smattering of freckles spread across his face. Above all else, he _cared_ , and it showed in how handled her. The jokes, the reassurances, the way he was _there_ for her.

Four months into seeing each other, he’d tapped her on the shoulder and offered her a penny. The surface was tarnished and dull, the details eaten by oxidation. It had startled her out of that silent depressive state she was prone to, her eyes wide as she’d stared at it. Clarifying, he’d said _For your thoughts. I never know what you’re thinking._

The little gesture had startled her into laughing, had her throwing her arms around him in a hug. It wasn’t long before her friends had picked it up, jokes on her name never being in short supply and she’d loved that affection and concern. It was something she’d missed almost painfully, the feeling she got in her chest when her loved ones pulled little things just for her.

She’d told Danse the story when she’d found an old coin collection in the basement of a dilapidated house. The things weren’t worth anything more than scrap then, but she’d pried the little plastic case open and pulled out the penny. It was shiny but worn, the mint year just barely visible. The words had just came out as she’d stared at it, taking her gloves off just so she could get the scent of the copper on her skin. It was a piece of her past life, a time that felt like it’d happened to a completely different person at that point.

She’d pressed the penny into Danse’s hand, his big metal fingers closing around it in confusion.

“It’s lucky,” she’d said at the look on his face. Her words were tinged with a nostalgic kind of sadness, that melancholy that sat in the back of her head. “There was a pre-war saying about them.”

“A colloquialism about found coins,” he’d said, raising an eyebrow. “It sounds almost too coincidental.”

“I think my parents had all of the jokes they could make in mind when they named me,” she’d said softly.

They’d left after that, life going on until a month before the Prydwen had crashed. Penny had been sitting in front of the fire, legs pulled close and sweating in the early June heat. Even at night, it still cooked her, lulling her into staring at the flames while her judgement calls and fears for the future rattled around in her skull.

Then Danse had tapped her on the shoulder, holding out a cap to her and hesitantly saying, “I am… unaware of the exchange rate, but a cap should be worth at least four thoughts.”

She’d stared at him, throat closing painfully and tears pricking at the back of her eyes. Surprise at him remembering her mention the little gesture bled into affection as she took the cap, her thumb brushing over the chipped red paint and pressed metal. Looking down at the scratched surface, her vision blurred as she tried not to cry but it happened anyway. As he pulled her into his lap so he could hold her and she could press little adoring kisses to his face, she was positive in that moment that she loved him.

But that had been months ago, and as they were now, _love_ couldn’t completely encapsulate how she felt about him. _Hate_ didn’t quite fit the bill either, her heart softening too much whenever she looked at his form in the pink early-morning sun. _Affectionate_ and _tired_ fit in there somewhere, right beside _heartsick_ and _angry._

Listening to him talk about absolutely nothing as he stomped beside her on their way to the settlement, though? That could be described as purely _annoyed._

“Danse, if you keep talking about how wind direction is factoring into our travel time, I’m taking away your fusion core,” she said, keeping her eyes trained ahead as she checked to make sure they were on the right course.

He shut up after that, the only sounds he made coming from the creaking of his power armor. When they made camp for the night, they found an old empty cave, shallow and safe enough for the night.

While Danse was inspecting his armor, she quickly tugged his holotags off and stuffed them in her pack, not wanting him to know she’d put them on. They were so much a comfort item, shape familiar and warm in the palm of her hand. Unsure of what he’d do if he noticed them on her chest, she’d rather brush her thumb and get lost in memories when she was alone.

Time after that passed in cold silence, the fire he’d struck the only real warmth in the area. She busied herself with ignoring her thoughts in favor of cleaning her gun or organizing her pack. She emptied everything out and put it back in, her thumb lingering over his cracked holotag picture and unwanted longing overtaking her again.

She finished repacking and went to put her bag by her bedroll, passing by Danse and pausing on her way back to her spot. That ugly longing had completely swallowed her, made her aware of every heartbeat and twist of her insides. It was painful, awful, terrible, made her completely heartsick. Giving in to the little urges, she hesitantly reached towards him and softly brushed her fingers over his face, wanting so _badly_ to smooth the look of concentration he had on as he stared at the flames.

He was startled out of his reverie, her hand freezing in shock as he sighed her name, the word so _sad_ the way it just slipped out.

Then his face turned up towards her, wide eyes cast with dancing shadows as the bright fire pulled yellow lights over him. The way he’d sighed her name hung heavily in the night. It had been breathy and involuntary, a sound that reminded her of waking up next to him with his lips at her neck and arms around her chest.

Suddenly, almost violently, her limbs felt weak and head dizzy. Her hand came down, arm heavy from it all. It was embarrassment at being that vulnerable, crossing that line of wreckage between them and _missing_ him enough to give in and gently graze her fingers over his rough skin or thick hair. It was embarrassment at loving the way her name sounded in his mouth, the way he said it so simply when nothing he said ever just _was_. It was embarrassment at being glad he’d come _back_ and letting herself get tangled up like this.

Then his hand came up and gently closed around her own, calloused thumb brushing delicate circles over the back of her palm. The little gesture snapped something inside of her and she was caught between yanking her arm away to yell at him and letting all of her frustration out in big blubbery tears. She settled on squeezing his hand and bending down to wrap her other around his shoulders.

“Get some sleep,” she said softly, lips almost grazing against his pulse.

He let out a sigh through his nose, not holding her back but his hand tightened. “You too,” he murmured, words so close to the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

Though that night, she knew he didn’t actually close his eyes when fatigue drove him to his bedroll. Hers never really did either.

The next day passed in tense, quiet travel. A small clump of bloodbugs ambushed them, one attaching to Danse and furiously trying to stab its proboscis through the plates of his armor before Penny shot it in half. They covered good ground, the both of them so focused on ignoring the night before that they were just a few hours from the settlement when they came across a safe house they’d fixed a lifetime ago.

Penny made them stop, the night dangerous and cold. Danse didn’t put up a fight or offer a comment, just ducking inside of the shack with her. The inside was dark and dusty and the silence between the two of them was tense and frigid. It frustrated her to the point where she felt like tearing out her hair, the memory of his rough skin as she’d brushed her knuckles across his cheek itching on her.

“We need to talk,” she said finally, tossing her pack down onto the floor of the shack.

Danse stepped out of the power armor, rolling his joints to alleviate the tension. “Something’s upsetting you,” he said. A statement, not a question.

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked around for a moment. “Isn’t… _this_ upsetting you too?” she asked, eyes flicking to him.

He swallowed and flexed his fingers, looking towards a boarded-over window. “I’m not sure.”

Penelope sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Pick what we’re having for dinner. I’m gonna have a smoke.”

He just nodded and she grabbed her carton. The door to the shack shook when she slammed it shut, but irritation was burning in her fingertips. It made everything more tense inside of her: her guts, the creeping headache, the pain in her chest. Her cigarettes didn’t even help, instead this anxious anger just making her notice how much they tasted like _shit_.

The butt she crushed against the rotten wood wasn’t even finished. The stale menthol upset her stomach and she made a disgusted face as she watched the remains smolder on the ground until they blinked out completely. Then she waited another ten minutes outside just breathing in the cold air to calm herself down.

Her Pip-Boy blinked 8:08 and she sighed. She figured she’d been avoiding him long enough for him to do something with himself, or stew over his emotions. He was particularly good at juggling his internal emotional struggle and menial tasks. For someone who could keep talking for hours, he said remarkably _little_.

“Cram again?” she asked softly, pushing the door to the shack open again.

He was sitting on the ground with his bedroll underneath him. A small stack of cans was in front of him, two bottles of water on either side. Their guns were already in pieces around him, a stained old rag in his hand. “It’s what we have a surplus of.”

“My insides are gonna turn pink if I eat anymore of that crap,” she said, grabbing her bedroll and spreading it out on the other side of the can stack. “I might try for a stag tomorrow, there are still some around.” _I need a steak in the worst way,_ she thought, picking up a water bottle and can, leaving the remaining three for him.

Danse just nodded, silent for a moment and hands moving quickly as he snapped parts of her carbine back together. Then, “What did you want to discuss earlier?”

Penny was halfway through pulling the top off of the can, fork held awkwardly in her fingers. “You’re not gonna even let me eat first? Aren’t _you_ hungry?”

“The anticipation has made me lose my appetite.”

She snorted, sticking her fork in the bright pink meat. “Eat one first, then we’ll talk,” she said, kicking her leg out and knocking a can towards him.

The look he gave her was _almost_ withering, but not quite. He put her gun down and pulled the can open, metal grease shining on his fingers as he stabbed the cram and pulled out nearly half of it. The can was cleared in three bites, Danse setting the it down and wiping his fingers on the oily rag as he looked at her expectantly.

Her mouth quirked in at the corners, fingers playing with the fork still stuck in her own can. “Fine. I wanted to talk about… _us_. This.” _Whatever_ this _is._

He looked away and picked up the barrel of her gun, running his fingers over the bluing. “I’m unsure where to start.”

“Why did you _leave?_ ” she blurted, snapping her mouth shut. She almost clamped her hand over it too, but she couldn’t quite figure out how to release the death grip she had on her can right then.

Danse tensed immediately, knuckles white with the force of his grip on the metal. Had it been made out of lesser materials, she was sure it would’ve snapped or broken. The air was achingly silent between them both, the December wind outside rattling the broken glass in the shattered windows. It stopped the awkwardness from being _painful_ , but it fell short of keeping it bearable.

“I panicked when I’d heard that the Prydwen crashed,” he started, rolling his lips into his mouth as he stared at the gun parts on the floor. “A radio message played that the airport was on fire, that the airship had exploded, and I didn’t know what to do. I just packed my things and left.”

“You didn’t even _tell_ anyone. Fuck, Danse, I deserved at least a _note_.” _I deserved the decency of you telling me you were leaving to my face._

He looked at her directly and she saw the first sparks of anger fire in his eyes. “What about you? You destroyed the Brotherhood, all for the _Railroad_.”

“It’s not like I had a _choice!_ ” she snapped, standing and slamming her can of cram down. Little bits of pink meat had spattered everywhere, Danse looking up at her in shock and directionless anger from the ground. “I can’t look at you right now,” she muttered, stalking over to the shack door.

She’d just come back in but she was already pushing herself back out. The air outside had dropped drastically, biting through her coat. It set her to shivering right away, goosebumps popping up as the wind cut through her. Anger simmered under her skin, but it was fading quickly as she stood there, embarrassed at yelling like she had.

It was something she’d agonized over constantly, an itch in the back of her mind that she couldn’t scratch away. A tiny annoyance that made her conscience feel sick and skin feel wrong. It was anger at the feeling of being completely _used_ , of forcing herself down a path for the wrong reasons, of _regret_.

But if she admitted regret, even to herself, everything she’d been through would be worth less than nothing.

Thirty minutes of standing in the cold left her shivering. The thought of having a cigarette was appealing, and she gave in, only getting so far as taking half a drag before crushing it in disgust. The momentary heat was nice, but the terrible taste just compounded on the guilt in her gut. That, and her melting pride, had her knocking softly on the door to the shack. Danse didn’t say anything, so she let herself in.

He was furiously scrubbing at his power armor, buffing out a scuff he’d gotten. If he’d heard her enter, he was staunchly ignoring her in favor of maintenance. She huffed and walked over to him, gently grabbing his hand to stop him from rubbing a hole straight through the plates.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” she said softly.

He didn’t look down at her immediately, mouth mashed into a line. Then his eyes turned towards her, stare surprisingly not upset. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t have a choice?”

Penny looked at the spot he’d scrubbed clean, trying to control her expression. “The Brotherhood attacked the Railroad. We barely survived it, and Glory didn’t. Desdemona gave me a bomb and told me to finish it.”

Danse turned back to the suit of armor and went back to buffing, the movement stiff and robotic. “Did you want to?” he asked, voice rough and subdued.

 _I don’t know._ “Does it matter at this point?”

He sighed out of his nose in frustration, still wiping at his armor. “It does to me.”

She reached out and fiddled with one of the bolts on the suit’s wrist, mouth quirked in one corner. “I haven’t done something I wanted to in a long time.” Since she’d seen the Prydwen fly in in the dark sky, floodlights throwing harsh beams on the crumbling shipping containers, her life had been entirely built out of _I have to_.

They fell silent after that. Penny secluded herself to the further section of the shack, furiously trying to read a book she’d left in the house specifically to avoid her own thoughts. Danse let himself loose on everything, meticulously cleaning and fixing their weapons and her armor. He saved her gun for last, hands slowing as he carefully snapped and reattached all the pieces on her rifle. It was silent save the wind and the creaking as the floorboards groaned under his weight.

“I regretted it the third day out,” he said suddenly. It startled her out of her thoughts, his voice rough like he’d been holding it in for too long.

“What do you mean?” Her eyes flicked to him and saw him staring at the stock of her gun, fingers tracing over the resin lines from where he’d fixed it.

“Leaving.” He swallowed then sighed through his nose, face flushing darkly. “I woke up in the middle of the night, and I rolled over and reached for you, sighing your name.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. He looked entirely lost in that memory and her chest _ached_ , insides completely bruised for him. Her heart had been beating wrong as of late, and just seeing the total heartbreak on his face made her remember the way he used to make her feel.

The floorboards creaked as she stood and walked over to him, sitting down in front of him. She took her gun out of his hands and placed it gently on the floor. Leaning forward, she wrapped one arm around his neck and the other under his arm, holding him closely as her affection overflowed. She _wanted, needed, craved,_ but it was all for a relationship that didn't exist anymore. He held her back, grip fast and tight as he pressed his face into her neck.

“We just need to calm down,” she murmured into his shoulder. “I don’t know what we _are_ anymore.”

“What do you want us to be?” he asked, voice muffled.

She rubbed her face into his shoulder, taking a small piece of comfort in the solid heat his body offered. “I feel like I can’t trust you, Danse.” _I’m not sure if I can handle you leaving a second time._

He held her more tightly, pulled her completely into his lap so he could curl himself around her. “I know,” he said. She was just the slightest bit glad it wasn’t _I’m sorry_. They’d both said it too much lately.

“Can we just… try starting over?”

She felt him swallow thickly and nod. He didn’t say anything, but he squeezed her for a moment before letting her go. They pulled apart, her skin immediately prickling from the loss. The shack around them groaned as a hard gust of wind rocked the old aching boards, but Penelope didn’t hear anything as she gently cupped his face with one hand while her other rested on his shoulder. In that moment, she didn’t want to kiss him or go back to those warm spring nights where they were okay. This here was enough.

The night clouded over as they slept, a foot between their bedrolls. Penny’s dreams hazed over too, blending into a heavy mix of scenarios and levels of consciousness that made her shaky and sweaty when she woke up. They ate in relative silence too, Penny shoving down another can of cram while she watched Danse clean off two. It was something close to companionable, their knees almost touching. Still unsure of where they stood or if whatever they were could work out, she was content to just take the moments as they happened. Danse didn’t touch her or look at her sadly; instead he reported on the thick gray sky and the encroaching cold front. He expected snow.

Two hours into walking, Penny found a radstag and shot it clean through its left head. Getting closer, she fired another round through the blind eye on the right one, stopping its panicked thrashing. Danse praised her for the efficiency of the kill, a loud _Outstanding!_ as they drained it. He helped her skin and clean it for two hours, packing the strips and steaks they cut away in an old tarp she’d brought from the safehouse. She was sure he could’ve gone faster, but he’d always found comfort in indulging in tasks he knew well.

They arrived at the settlement at high noon, a few thin flakes just beginning to fall from the lumpy sky. The woman pointed them towards a band of raiders that had taken to attacking caravans that came through. After hearing how they haven’t had enough food because of the raids, Penny gave them most of the meat, saving a few pounds for her and Danse. He didn’t comment, but she felt a mixed sense of approval from him. They would never be able to use all of it anyway, and he was going to wear himself out carrying it with him.

The raiders hadn’t set up too far away. It was close enough to prey easily on any unsuspecting people passing through, but not close enough that they risked their safety while they slept. They should’ve taken more care with fortifying their little fort from that. None of the six saw her and Danse coming.

Penny picked off two that were sitting up, pretending to keep watch. Before the others even had a chance to realize what was happening, she took down another one while crouched in the snowy brush. Danse killed the two that had been sober enough to wake up and fight back, then the one that slept through his comrades’ deaths. He never woke up.

That night was spent in quiet celebration. The raiders' bodies were dragged away and dropped off downwind, the underside of their fort the perfect place to sleep and avoid getting mauled. They pried a wire grate off of the fort and used it to grill the steaks they’d cut off. Penny only finished half of hers, giving the rest to Danse who easily finished his and then hers.

“You’re like a frickin’ giant,” she murmured, chin resting on her hand with her legs pulled up.

He stood up from burying the bones and brushed his hands off. “I’ve met people taller than myself.”

Penny let out a snort. “Yeah, I saw one at the circus once, but you’re a close second.”

He made a face at her and she laughed. The snow had picked up, the white flakes falling thickly outside of their enclosure. He came and sat down heavily next to her, brushing the flakes out of his hair. His body heat was enticing and she shivered, inching a little closer.

“I’ve met children taller than you,” he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

She shrugged. “I’m stunted, what can I say?”

“Your son is almost as tall as you are.”

She froze up at the mention of Shaun. “He takes after Nate more in that department. He was 5’ 10”,” she said, tone turning morose.

Danse watched her for a moment, shifting on his sleeping bag. “Is something bothering you?”

“I wouldn’t say _bothering_ ,” she started, picking at a loose board until she came up with a scrap of it. “I told you he was a synth, and it doesn’t matter to me, but I’m just worried about him.” She pulled the fibers apart while she spoke, tugging it out into strips and letting them fall.

“Why?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together.

Penny sighed, the little gust blowing her wood shavings around. “I love him, but I don’t know what I’m gonna do if he doesn’t… _grow up._ ”

“Synths typically do not age.”

“I _know_ ,” she snapped, pulling up another shard of wood and repeating the process. “But he’s a _child_. For as much knowledge as the Institute claimed to have, they really knew fuck-all about synths.”

Danse was silent at that, the wind outside screaming around their enclosure. Penny shivered and pulled her coat tighter around herself, shaking for a minute before she huffed and climbed into her sleeping bag. It was still freezing when she zipped it up, but she didn’t complain, instead content to stew in her own thoughts.

Then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder through the sleeping bag. She turned and saw Danse gently rubbing her arm, both of them flushing bright red as their eyes met. He cleared his throat and looked away, his hand stopping, but still staying on her.

“You showed me that synths— _I_ —weren’t just machines. Your son isn’t one either.” His tone was warm and low, calming her in a visceral way.

 _He’s trying to make me feel better_ , she thought, eyes going wide. She swallowed and looked from his face to his hand. After a moment of deliberation, she reached out and threaded their fingers together, her thumb brushing over his.

“Thank you,” she murmured softly. _Take it slow, start over._

He nodded and thankfully didn’t bend to kiss her. That was an artifact from how they’d been, his favorite thing to do. She’d eventually stopped trying to count the number of kisses where he’d pressed his lips to the bridge of her nose, and now, after so many months without it, she wished she’d kept better track.

It was late afternoon when they returned to the settlement. The early morning hours had been spent in the white silence afforded by the thin layer of snow that remained. Before he’d climbed back into his power armor, she’d wrapped her arms around him tightly, pressing another thanks into his chest. His frame was stiff at first, but he’d eventually eased into holding her back. It had been nice, his body heat soaking into her and she felt so _safe_. That feeling had been missed.

The settlement was grateful they’d taken care of the problem. They’d salted the venison they couldn’t immediately keep, giving Penny nearly a third of it back. Danse grumbled about having to carry it back, but she hushed him. It was a half-hearted complaint anyway.

The snow melted in the days between then and their return to Sanctuary. It slowed them down, the melt freezing again during the night. On one occasion, Danse climbed back into his power armor and flexed the joints, frost falling away and chipping off. On another, he caught her when she slipped on a tricky patch, asking her to be more careful. He’d bent down so she could brush her thumbs over his cheeks for the concern in his voice.

Shaun tackled her in a hug at Sanctuary by way of greeting. She laughed as she spun him to stay standing, kissing his frostbitten cheeks. He had such a happy grin, wide and bright and just like Nate’s. The sharpness at the corners and the point of his nose might have been hers, but the genuine sheen of his expression was his father’s.

Danse holed himself off to avoid another scene, and MacCready was noticeably laying low as well. Maybe he was fearing a lecture or a repeat of last time, but she didn’t spend time ferreting him out. Sturges grabbed her and handed her a list of parts for the holoplayer. The thought that he could get the thing up and running had her fingertips tingling in anticipation. The tin of Nate's old movies in her side table drawer might not go to waste then.

It was late at night by the time she was released from her duties. So many people had new things to ask of her or just inform her on, it had exhausted her until she felt liable to collapse. She slogged her way into her house, electing not to wake her son, and wandered into the living room. Danse was awake, as she expected.

She took a deep breath and sat down next to him. The travel beard was gone, replaced with his nearly clean-shaven face. It was like he had a constant 5 o’clock shadow, or that he was afraid of cutting himself if he shaved too closely. He was sitting in silence there, eyes unfocused as he tried to read an old book by the light of a flickering lamp. The look on his face was intent and just the slightest bit pained; she’d seen it many times before.

“Headache?” she asked softly, gently putting her hand on his knee.

He looked over at her and blinked, grimacing as he put the book down. “It’s manageable.”

“I have painkillers in the cabinet if you want them,” she offered, leaning closer to him.

He shifted so she could grab his hand, her skin smooth compared to the little nicks and callouses on him. “I’ll be alright.”

“Do you want me to sit with you?”

“You look exhausted,” he said, soft brown eyes tired. “Go to sleep, I’ll be fine.”

Her mouth tugged at the corners, the beginnings of a grin. “You’ve surpassed having bags under your eyes, Danse. It’s like an entire set of matched luggage.”

His lips pulled into a smile, wide and the kind that made his eyes crease up a little. “Fine, I’ll go to sleep, but you do too.”

“Hey, I was on my way until I saw you sitting in here.” She stood and tugged him to stand with her, her hands holding his loosely.

He bent down as if to kiss her, but he caught himself. They both took a deep breath in the little awkward silence that followed, trying to ignore the slip-up. _Take it slow, calm down, start over._

She said goodnight and went back to her room, falling asleep quickly. In the morning, she couldn’t remember if she’d dreamt or not, but she was fine not recalling. If they had been the nightmares, it was useless to let them ravage her during the day too.

The day went by smoothly. There wasn’t much left for her to do, and she was left to focus on repairing her house and organizing the growing traders’ stalls. Sanctuary was filling quickly, her chest swelling with pride at helping her community live again. The years had left it ravaged, but that nagging loneliness in her guts had pushed her to make it a place to live in again.

Preston grabbed her before the day was out, giving her another settlement to help. She was grateful again, falling easily into this primal kind of work. A certain complacency with killing had grown inside of her, a detachment that stopped the guilt if it was for protection. Raiders weren’t worth the bullets, preying on those who weren’t capable enough to protect themselves. She was.

The settlement was far-flung and out of the way. It was incredible he’d even picked up the news that they’d needed help. Even so, she set out the next morning, saying goodbye to her friends and family individually before stomping away with Danse next to her.

It took a week to get there, the snow melting completely and then getting refreshed. Danse got stuck in a snowdrift, Penny sprained her ankle in a covered molerat hole. The terrain had become treacherous and frozen, forcing them to find regular shelter in half-collapsed shacks and broken-down rail houses. The night she’d sprained her ankle, she’d climbed into Danse’s lap, shivering and spaced out from the stimpaks and painkillers. He’d held her through the night, both of them propped up against a wall while her radio played quietly to fill the white silence.

That time was as slow as the two of them knew how to be. It was little touches and murmured words of concern. Danse was always there when she woke up, as if he made it a point to be as visible to her as possible. The little things touched her completely, made her heartsick all over again for him. It was a different kind of longing that grew in her chest, and often she’d stop him when they were done walking so she could just stand up and hug him, their bodies swaying gently to their pulses.

The settlers pointed them to a big raider plant in the East. Two days of travel there, almost an entire day clearing the dilapidated buildings of raiders, and then four days to get back through the fresh snow, and they were thanked in the form of a few extra blankets and canned goods.

After they’d told the settlement that the raider problem was finished, Penny noticed the date on her Pip-Boy. It was only a few days off from New Year’s Eve, and she pressed Danse into agreeing to stop at Diamond City with her. It had been two weeks since she’d set out from Sanctuary, and almost five since she’d last been to Fenway.

Things weren’t perfect between them for those two weeks, but they were _good_. They were made of little touches and easy conversation. The heaviness of missing him and the anger of no explanation melted away slowly. What they _were_ was indistinguishable; they were such a mixed up mess that the casual glance could either see them as lovers or two people just in the first awkward throes of affection. It made her more comfortable around him. It made the days more tolerable. It lessened the way his touch burned her.

The nightmares still happened, though. They were the ones where every suit of power armor had him inside of them, or where she stumbled upon ferals ripping him open and swallowing pieces of him whole. The ones where she was forced to kill him had stopped, a thankful reprieve from the emotional torment that lingered even when she woke up. It made seeing him when she woke up a fuzzy ordeal, her body still anxious but her conscious mind only giving her enough to gently brush her fingers over his face or reach for his hand.

When they arrived at Diamond City, it was the day before December 31st. They stopped at her house, Danse commenting on the sparse furnishings. As if just to spite him, she dragged him to the market and made him pick out furniture. True to his tastes, he picked a bench when pressed, along with a rickety table. He helped her drag them back to her house, fixing them in her main room just to fill the empty space.

Before the stalls closed again, Penny bought herself a coat. It was thick and lined with doe fur, guaranteed to stop the wind from cutting right through her. It didn’t fit perfectly, but it was small enough where she could make up the difference with a sweater. Along with extra clothes to keep at her house, she bought a new sweater and pants for Danse. It was incredible the sweater fit him, albeit a little snugly, but it would stretch out. The pants were a little short, but she was sure Anne could take them down.

That night, she pulled out a trundle bed for Danse to sleep on. She stared at the rafters while she listened to him snore downstairs, picturing the way his feet hung off the end of the cot. After her Pip-Boy blinked 2am at her, she clicked her radio on softly and turned towards the wall, trying to ignore the chill in the house.

The day was awkward, though it shouldn’t have been. Trying to ignore the odd tension that had sprung back up between them, she had him help her clear her roof of snow so it didn’t cave in or buckle. After that, they ate at Power Noodles and she contemplated ribbing him for the way he stared at Takahashi warily.

Finally it was 5pm and appropriate for her to start drinking without looking like she deserved pity. She started off with an old whiskey bottle from her pack, passing it between her and Danse to finish it off. With the pleasant buzz it gave her, she opened another and they repeated the process, though Danse drank most of it. She was content to let him; he was twice her size and with a synth’s metabolism, it was gonna take a lot more for him than for her.

They stumbled into the Dugout a little before 10, the bar stuffed with patrons, many already too drunk to stand. Penny was almost with them, tiny frame taking the hit from the whiskey harder than she’d anticipated. Even so, she wasn’t a quitter and worked her way through half of a bottle of vodka before Danse stopped her from trying to fight another patron. He claimed it wasn’t worth it, and she fought the way he lifted her like she weighed nothing. She was tossed over his shoulder and he paid Vadim before leaving with her, his footsteps unsteady and just the slightest bit drunker than she thought he was.

He put her down outside of the bar, her struggling too much for him right then. She was cut off from Vadim, and another bar didn’t seem particularly appealing to her.

“We can go back to my house,” she suggested, speaking slowly. “I still have… _two_ bottles of vodka.”

Danse looked caught between seeing the bad idea right before his eyes and letting it happen. Apparently he was in the mood to just let it happen.

“Alright, but we can’t overdo it. You’re… _very_ intoxicated.”

“You’re not sober yourself, Danse,” she muttered, already stumbling back to her house.

She unlocked the front door and called out that she was home, confused by the silence before she remembered that she lived alone. They stood there, unsteady and unsure what to do. As she fished around for her spare bottles, she was struck with an idea, her fingers closing around the neck of a vodka bottle.

“The roof!” she said excitedly, grabbing Danse’s hand and tugging him towards the staircase. “We can wait for the countdown up there.”

On the roof, the wind was more noticeable. She checked her Pip-Boy for the time before unlocking it and putting it on her patio table. With 30 minutes until midnight, she was sure they could figure out something to do.

She walked to her railing and sat down, letting her skirt bunch up and legs hang down off the edge. Danse followed her, taking the bottle from her after she’d unscrewed the cap and taking a swig. He held onto it mostly, draining it steadily as they talked and the streets below grew more crowded and rowdy.

“I’m going to take better care in regulating my sleep cycle,” Danse said, squinting at the bottle after he’d taken a particularly long drink.

“‘Scuse me?” she asked, mind chugging slowly as she fought to process what he’d said. It was remarkably difficult.

“My resolution,” he said, sloshing the bottle around. “It’s customary to make one for the new year.”

“Oh. Maybe I’ll quit smoking again, then,” she muttered, reaching for the bottle and taking a drink. “They taste like shit, anyway.”

“Are you aware I used to smoke?" he said, words almost slurring together.

“ _No!_ You make a face whenever I use med-x to stop a bullet wound from killing me!”

“I did,” he said, hand closing over her own as he took the bottle back. “I quit when I was promoted past Initiate.”

Penny made a face, turning back to look out at the crowd. She could pick out a few couples already celebrating the new year, though there was still a minute or two before it rolled over. “You’re always ridin’ me over it.”

He took a drink and finished the bottle, setting it down carefully so it didn’t roll off the roof and kill someone standing below. “I care about your health,” he said, a hand pressing his eyes in as he groaned, clearly upset with how drunk he’d managed to get.

She looked at him affectionately, struggling to really focus on him. Sitting down, it was easy to convince herself that she wasn’t _that_ drunk, and that he couldn’t be either. A blush crept up her neck as she watched him, brightening when he turned and saw her staring, asking her what was wrong.

“ _Kiss me,”_ she murmured, leaning towards him. She shook precariously, arms unsteady and drunk while her feet just dangled uselessly over the edge of her roof.

Danse hesitated, eyes hooded as he swallowed thickly and looked at her. She bit her lips in expectation, almost closing her eyes just to make him feel less nervous. The vodka could only do so much, but it had done so _much_ already. All of the separation anxiety and residual reservations had melted out two hours ago, leaving behind only that old acute longing to be held like she used to.

Her fingers gently brushed over his own, her gaze turning down to look at her hand on his. She closed her hand around his, his knuckles chapped and so completely _missed_. God, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to touch him and not want to tear her hair out, to feel the way his thumb was gently soothing over her fingers and just let it _happen_. They’d been moving towards something calmer these past few weeks, everything gaining some semblance of normalcy but at this point what she wanted was _him_.

She said _Kiss me_ again, throwing her impending hangover and regret out of her head as the countdown started. Diamond City yelled the count along with Travis, Danse leaning in just a little bit more. Their eyes met when she felt him shift, his face flushing even further. This close, she could smell the whiskey and soap she’d given him, the leather of his jacket and the dust in his sweater. Almost too close, she felt like he was about to lean away and give her a _This isn’t a good idea._

Then he _kissed_ her.

The countdown ended, the entirety of Diamond City screaming as the year rolled over. His other hand came up to cup her face, mouth gentle as he pressed softly against her lips. A few guns went off in celebration and her mind felt fuzzy and snapped, arms sliding up his chest and fisting in his sweater to yank him down onto her.

The force behind her pull made him groan, had him opening his mouth into the kiss as they pressed themselves together. They fell down in an awkward tangle, Penny struggling to free her legs from the railing as Danse held himself over her. The kiss was _hard_ , stuffed with all of the longing and little touches over the past two months. They knocked teeth a few times, both too drunk to presently care past how close they could press themselves together without smothering the other.

Penny finally got her legs free and wrapped them around him, arms around his neck and crushing him against her. It was messy, sloppy, their limbs catching and clothing tugging as they fought to feel more of each other. His hands trailed down from holding her face to her knees, pushing her skirt up so he could hold her thighs still. Her hands tangled in his hair, tugging just to hear him moan into the kiss for her. Behind it all, the party in the square was screaming, drunk revelers still yelling.

She wasn’t sure how long she let him kiss her, _touch_ her—but sometime around the third bite he left on her neck, she managed to pull him away.

“My back hurts,” she croaked, struggling to focus her eyes.

Danse swallowed, panting and gaze hazy. He leaned back on his knees, running a hand through his hair to smooth it down. She sat up with him, body tired and loose as she clambered to stand, unsteady and _much_ drunker than she had originally thought. On his knees, she was maybe only a little more than a head taller.

He stood completely, body shaky as they supported each other. Her arms held him loosely, the both of them swaying as he cupped her face and kissed her again. The railing hit her as they backed up, the scream of the rickety metal jarring them both out of each other. Even drunk and under a thin haze of arousal, Penny could tell staying on the roof was a bad idea.

They went slowly down the stairs, stopping only when she trapped him against a wall to press their bodies together again. Everything was blurry and messy, hands tugging at each other to get closer as Danse stumbled the rest of the way down with her legs around his waist. It was hard and stuffed with longing, their hands managing to shove each other’s jackets off when they hit the bottom of the stairs.

Danse stopped and hesitated before she pulled on the collar of his sweater, her mouth eagerly pressing to his neck because she _knew_ that was what pulled him apart. Exhaustion beat right under her skin but the vibrancy of finally being close kept her from falling asleep in his arms. Coupled with the way he juggled her and the way she’d _almost_ forgotten the taste of his skin, she was still coherent enough to yelp when they fell heavily onto her tiny twin mattress. But even with the screaming frame, the adrenaline had faded and the mattress was worlds more comfortable than her roof had been. Within a few moments of hitting the bed, they passed out in a drunk tangle of limbs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's 8 am this time and i'm exhausted


	5. Impossible Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She watched his face sink into something heavier, more regretful. He sighed through his nose, hands moving to hold hers tightly between the both of his. An oppressive air had sunk down around the two of them, independent of the snowstorm that had picked up outside. The wind raged and Penny could feel bits of snow and ice getting spat against her back, but she barely noticed.
> 
> “Hey,” she said softly, pulling a hand free and reaching for his face. He bent down so she could reach, his eyes closing as she cupped his rough cheek. “I know that face.”
> 
> “I should’ve stayed,” he said, holding her hand against his face. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, the touch gentle.
> 
> “You’re here now,” she said. Pulling him down closer, she leaned her forehead against his, the point of her nose squishing a little as he moved to hold her closely. In that moment, she almost said so _many_ things, be it a sudden confession for how badly his leaving had killed her, or just how heavily her fear of abandonment had grown in her guts, but she wasn’t in the mood to start a fight.

The rollover from year 2287 to 2288 was something that Penelope only noticed when Danse pointed it out.

She had been almost instantly promoted past initiate, it felt like. The climb had been accompanied by a suit of power armor she didn’t quite fit into and a set of holotags that blinked _Knight Howard_ in hazy blue letters that she’d tossed into a drawer and never looked at again. The light behind the quartz screen made her look pale and distorted, and recently she hadn’t been able to look at herself for very long without seeing her son.

It had been at most a week since she’d wandered out of the Memory Den and she was still acclimating herself to the thought of throwing herself into the Glowing Sea. She’d adjusted the chassis on her power armor and had enough rad medicine to clean half of the harbor, but she lacked back up. After securing Fort Strong with Danse, she felt confident enough asking him to hurl himself into the Sea with her.

He’d agreed the moment she asked, expression typical and determined. Then that night, as they were traveling back to Sanctuary from the Prydwen, the snowstorm forced them to find shelter in an abandoned rail house.

“It’s December 31st,” he announced, stepping out of his power armor. Unbuttoning his hat and running a hand through his hair, he continued. “As such, it’s a cause for celebration.”

Penny looked up at him from where she’d spread her bedroll out on the ground. “You want to have a _party?”_

He pulled his bag out of his armor. “No, we don’t have the supplies for a party,” he said as he rifled around it. “It’s just a good time for reflection,” he said, appraising a bottle he had pulled out.

“Sounds fantastic,” she muttered, pulling her cigarettes out and lighting one. She took a drag and held it in, making a face at the taste as he came and sat down next to her. There was a respectable amount of space between them, about a foot. The distance of rank.

He took a drink and offered the bottle to her. She grabbed it by the neck and squinted, identifying it as truly ancient bourbon. While she forced herself not to choke as she drank, Danse cleared his throat and began to speak.

“I did not want to ask on the Prydwen so as to not compromise your privacy,” he started, hands busying themselves with wiping out the nose of his rifle. “But what are you searching for in the Glowing Sea?”

She took a drag just to try to stop the burning in her throat, fingers warming from the alcohol. “That’s very classy of you, Danse.” Her eyes followed the dull lines of the liquor as she swished it around in the bottle, trying to think of how to answer him.

“I can understand a desire for discretion,” he said voice low.

She made a _hmm_ noise and took another drink. Finished for now, she handed it back to Danse. “I have a son,” she said softly, cigarette close to her lips. She took another drag and held it for a moment, trying to ignore the silence that had fallen. “He was kidnapped, and my husband was murdered trying to stop it. I joined the Brotherhood so I could look for him.”

The pause after she finished speaking was as awkward as she expected it to be. Danse cleared his throat, and she didn’t look, but she heard the bottle slosh. “Your search has lead you to the Glowing Sea, then?”

“The Institute took him, and I need to find a way inside,” she said frankly. “A scientist named Virgil is in the Glowing Sea, and he’s _going_ to tell me.”

“I’m honored to help you, then, and I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, tone growing a kind familiarity she wasn’t sure the two of them even shared.

“It’s been two months, it’s getting better,” she mumbled, reaching for the bottle.

He moved it closer for her, watching as she took a drink and snuffed out the butt of her cigarette. “How old is your son?”

“Loaded question.” She took a long drink, closing her eyes against the burn. Finishing, she wiped her mouth and looked at the half-full bottle. “He was four months old when he was kidnapped but… he looked around ten last I saw him?”

“I don’t understand.” His was face was creased in confusion.

Penny sighed and ran a hand through her hair, tugging on the uneven strands. She chewed on her lip for a moment before tapping out another cigarette and telling him about the vault. He listened, face set in his usual stern expression while she spoke. After the vault and Shaun going missing, she found she couldn’t really _stop_ talking. She got as far as stumbling out of the Memory Den with Nick before he stopped her, saying he could fill in the rest.

She stretched and leaned further back, almost lying down, tired from the travel and tired from the stress and tired from the _worry_. There was a fear sitting in her guts that all of this would be for nothing, that either she’d never get into the Institute or that something awful had already befallen her son.

“He looks just like me, you know,” she murmured, throwing an arm over her eyes and sighing. _Too much like me._

“That’s how you knew he was your son?” he asked, finishing the bottle and putting it down. He stood and dusted himself off, gesturing for her to follow.

He spread out his bedroll and she watched him for a moment before doing so as well. “He has my nose and everything,” she said, sitting down on her sleeping bag. She touched her thumb to her upper lip and her index finger to her forehead, making a triangle. “Long and pointy.”

Danse smiled at her, and she grinned back, flushed from the bourbon and high of confession. They felt something like companionable then, and she was glad to have someone so experienced able and willing to walk into what would no doubt be a literal Hell. She fell asleep a foot away from him, shivering quietly in her bedroll until she passed out and the year rolled over.

Dawn of _2289,_ was signaled by the crows that had yet to migrate South for the winter. Their loud screaming didn’t wake Penny up, though. Suppressed under the shameful indulgence of the night before, and coupled with the heavy heat of a body on top of her, her eyes didn’t open until heavy beams of warm sunlight threw themselves over her.

Penelope groaned loudly, fighting to pull an arm free and shielding her eyes from the light. It was remarkably difficult, and blinking through the absolutely _pounding_ headache in her skull, she realized she could barely feel her legs. Looking down, she saw Danse with his face in her chest, snoring softly as he held her tightly, their bodies almost completely off of the mattress.

“Oh my _god_ ,” she whined, pulling her other arm free and trying to shove him off of her.

He made a noise and just turned his face completely into her, his nose dragging against the snaps on her vest. He’d always been an incredibly hard sleeper and she tried shoving him again before stopping in favor of nursing her headache. They were a sweaty tangle, her legs bent at a precarious angle and splayed awkwardly as he curled himself around her. Embarrassment and shame settled on top of her headache and she just let it wait in the back of her head. For the moment, her fingers threaded gently through his hair and waited for him to wake up.

After really only ten more minutes of softly pulling his thick hair and wiggling around in an effort to revive the parts of her body that had fallen asleep, he woke up. It happened gradually, first with him groaning as the hangover hit him and consciousness crept it, then him realizing where he was and groaning even louder.

“‘Morning,” Penny croaked, hand still in his hair.

Danse pushed himself off, rolling next to her and holding his face in shame and pain. “How much do you recall?” he asked, muffled by his hands.

She closed her eyes and sighed, ignoring the throbbing in her skull. “I remember breakin’ the bottle in the bar and tryin’ to fight that guy,” she mumbled.

He cleared his throat. “And the roof?”

“I’d forgotten how good of a kisser you were.” She brought a hand to her neck and felt the marks he’d left on her.

He made a noise caught between painfully embarrassed and a nervous laugh. They didn’t say anything else, just listening to each other breathe as the silence stretched on, awkward and thick. Eventually, she said she was going to get her Pip-Boy from where she’d left it on the roof and escaped up her staircase. In the freezing cold air outside, her mind felt clearer and she had the presence of mind to fully register her embarrassment and regret.

Returning back inside, she heard Danse turning the shower off. She waited downstairs, anxiously going through two cigarettes before he wandered down the stairs, heavy circles under his eyes and hair still damp. For want of something to do, she showered too, waiting too long under the hot water and having to finish getting the soap out of her eyes in freezing, shivering panic. Coming out and dressing, she found Danse on the bench in her living room, busying himself with a book from his pack.

They wandered through Diamond City silently for the most of the remaining daylight, having slept through a good part of it. The streets were stuffed with people who still hadn’t scraped themselves up yet, none of the usual stalls open. Occasionally, his hand would accidentally brush over her arm and he’d jump away, or she’d bump against him and flinch. In public, it felt different to try going back. The night before might’ve been fuzzy at best but she _knew_ what they’d did. She could remember the needy sounds he’d made for her with painful clarity, the rough bite of his nails as he’d held her too tightly impressed on her mind. It was a certain kind of torture, her body aching for him and yet still longing to just take it _back._

After dark, she contemplated finding trouble, but ultimately just decided to go back to her house. As eager as she was for the distraction of finding a dog fight and breaking it up, or of beating someone in a back alley to making a big mistake, the effort behind it wasn’t worth it. While she was sure Danse was just as eager as she was for the satisfaction of a fight, he didn’t object to just staying home.

Inside, he went straight for the addition, hopping onto the lowered floor and disappearing. She didn’t follow, muscles relaxing as the relief of not being around him flooded her. The day had been stressful when it should’ve been pleasant, _could’ve_ been pleasant. Picking through and counting her caps to see the damage from settling her tab, she couldn’t quite convince herself that this wasn’t something she wanted, at least on a subconscious level. Perhaps it was just a fascination with her own unhappiness, or it was that she’d become too used to how things between them were now that the thought of moving forward made her feel sick.

After 8, she wandered back into her living room for her cigarettes and found Danse sitting on the bench they’d bought. He was sitting with one leg pulled up under himself as he flipped through one of the magazines from her meager stack.

“I thought you were fixing your power armor,” she said.

He jumped, nearly upsetting the lamp on the side table. “I finished maintenance twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh.” She looked around and saw her pack propped up against the wall. “Do you want to do anything? It’s still kinda early.”

“I’m content to stay in,” he said, turning back to the magazine. “It started snowing as well, and I’m not looking forward to frostbite.”

She snorted, leaning against the wall, unsure of what to do with herself. “Do you wanna… talk, then?”

He didn’t look at her, but she could tell he wasn’t reading anymore. The magazine wrinkled a little in his grip and he chewed on his lip for a moment, the bench creaking as he shifted his foot out from under himself. The few feet between felt tense, too much between them left stuffed in the space.

Then, he took a deep breath and looked at a space somewhere to the left of her. “I apologize for kissing you last night. I shouldn’t have, it was uncalled for.”

“That’s not what I meant!” she said, surprised at how he’d clearly been dwelling on it as much as she had. She covered her face with one hand, embarrassed enough to pray the wall would buckle and swallow her.

He turned a violent red and ran a hand through his hair, now looking at the ground. “What did you mean, then?”

“I meant just talking,” she said, searching for her pack so she wouldn’t have to look at him. She grabbed it and pulled out her cigarettes, tapping one free. “Chatter, small-talk, just a conversation.”

“We can try that,” he said. She turned and saw him watching her hands as she dragged her thumb across the lighter, her skin relishing the tiny heat of the flame.

“Unless you want to talk about what happened,” she offered, calmer as she took a drag and let it out.

He looked at her, expression unreadable. “I do.”

She took a long drag and held it, making a face at the taste as she put it out in an ashtray. “Okay, then I’ll start,” she said, walking to stand in front of where he was sitting. “Do you regret it?”

The question had been burning her all day, almost made her crazy with how much she’d analyzed it. She hadn’t even fully pulled apart how _she_ felt, but now it was like she was walking on eggshells around him, wary of even the tiniest misstep.

He sighed through his nose and ran a hand through his hair, letting it hang on the back of his neck. “No,” he said frankly, not looking up at her. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while.”

She turned away, skin burning and face a bright red. “Then why’d you apologize?”

“I… overstepped our boundaries. It feels like I took advantage of you while inebriated, and the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t want to damage what we have even more.”

“Danse, it’s my fault,” she said, reaching out and holding his face. She tossed her reservations out of the window, shuffling in to be closer to him. “ _I_ asked you, I let it get out of hand.”

His eyes closed, head turning a little so his lips just barely grazed the edge of her palm. “I was thinking about it all night,” he murmured. “Do you regret it?”

 _I’m not sure._ “I can let you know in a few days,” she said instead.

A small smile cracked on his face. “I can handle that.”

Biting her lip, she let go of him and stood in front of him before asking if it was alright if she sat with him. Not seeming to quite grasp what she meant immediately, he blushed deeply after a moment and nodded, holding his arms out for her. She climbed in eagerly, folding herself into the embrace, safety in the way his chin rested on the crown of her head and their fingers fit together.

She didn’t know how long they sat there, her in his lap with their fingers threaded together, but it was long enough for his breathing to even, body relaxing around her. Not wanting either of them to have the pains that came from sleeping on a hard wooden bench, she got up and gently shook him.

“I’m going to sleep,” she murmured, giving his hand a squeeze before letting it go.

He swallowed and nodded his head, still looking up at her from the bench. He gave her a soft _goodnight_ and she walked heavily up the stairs, lead in her legs, body tired from the safe warmth of holding him.

The next morning she got him up early, a few hours before dawn. He seemed groggy, but they were both a loose sort of content. He held her hands gently and even gave her a small smile, tired brown eyes closing a little as his lips pulled up at the corners. She almost kissed him then, instead getting him to bend down so she could cup his face and lean their foreheads together. He’d sighed into the embrace, bodies swaying gently for a few minutes until they broke apart and got dressed.

She slipped his holotags around her neck again, holding them tightly for a second before layering over them. It felt like she still had to hide them from him, or that she had to have a reason to wear them again. That they made her feel more purposeful or comforted didn’t feel like enough, and keeping them under sweaters and armor made them feel more like an accessory and less like a badge of possession.

Before they left, she made him get out of his power armor and put another sweater on. He slipped it on over the one he was already wearing and zipped his jacket up around it, body puffy and she almost laughed just watching him climb back into his armor like that. Gloves and longjohns and three pairs of socks couldn’t really have prepared them for the kind of biting cold that sent Massachusetts into sub zero lockdown.

The stalls were still open though, and she awkwardly shuffled through them, trying to get the pieces Sturges had written down. Fuses, twenty feet of copper wire, extra coils for coupling the wires, one casing to be broken down for plastic, she pulled her scarf down only long enough to ask for each one before she paid and fixed herself back up. Leaving Diamond City, she snapped her goggles on to stop the wind from freezing her eyes, and she could hear Danse sealing his helmet on.

The snow slowed them to a crawl, the taller drifts nearly up to her waist. Twice, Danse had to step through them, carrying her because otherwise she’d sink in and get stuck. Holding onto his helmet and looking at the eyes, she had to remind herself that he was inside there and that this wasn’t some sort of horrible nightmare come to life. Both times he’d cleared the snow for her, he’d caught her staring and asked what was wrong. She’d just shook her head and peered into the eyes until she could see the silhouette of him inside.

They made camp in a half-exposed cave that night. It was empty save for old dusty bones that said it may have been a yao guai hole at one point, but they were all already in hibernation.

“As good as anything,” she mumbled as she pulled her scarf down, grateful for the reprieve from the wind.

“It’ll suffice,” Danse said. She heard his power armor hiss as he climbed out of it, the frame of it blocking part of the modest entrance to the cave.

She made a humming noise of agreement and pulled her gloves off to flex her fingers, working blood back into the frozen digits. “Is there anything in here we could use to start a fire? I can’t feel anything.”

He looked around, going further into the shallow cave. Lifting what looked like the remains of a crate or trunk, he called back to her. “This looks dry enough for kindling!”

The dry ground crunched lightly, echoing along with the blistering wind as she paced and tried to rub feeling back into her hands. Danse came up next to her, dropping the splintered boards down and looking at her shiver.

“Give me your hands,” he murmured, pulling his gloves off.

She raised an eyebrow but held her hands out, palm-side up. He took them and started rubbing hard circles into her skin, warm fingers gradually reintroducing heat to her body. Keeping her eyes fixed on their hands, she was blushing violently, sure she had to be almost purple with how embarrassed she felt. There were a few things keeping her from yanking her hands away and doing it herself, the thought that he was flushed just as much as she was placed squarely at the top.

“This is new,” he said quietly, turning her right hand over and tracing the short, thin scar on the back of her knuckles.

Her eyes glaced up at him shyly, saw him looking down at their hands with a far-off expression. “It happened over the summer,” she said, voice raspy. She cleared her throat a little, swallowing down the thickness that had crept in. “Stray bullet.”

The warm path of his fingers changed as he switched to her left hand, finding a cluster of little nicks of the edge of her palm. “These?”

“I fell out of a tree trying to get Shaun’s basketball,” she murmured.

She watched his face sink into something heavier, more regretful. He sighed through his nose, hands moving to hold hers tightly between the both of his. An oppressive air had sunk down around the two of them, independent of the snowstorm that had picked up outside. The wind raged and Penny could feel bits of snow and ice getting spat against her back, but she barely noticed.

“Hey,” she said softly, pulling a hand free and reaching for his face. He bent down so she could reach, his eyes closing as she cupped his rough cheek. “I know that face.”

“I should’ve stayed,” he said, holding her hand against his face. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, the touch gentle.

“You’re here now,” she said. Pulling him down closer, she leaned her forehead against his, the point of her nose squishing a little as he moved to hold her closely. In that moment, she almost said so _many_ things, be it a sudden confession for how badly his leaving had killed her, or just how heavily her fear of abandonment had grown in her guts, but she wasn’t in the mood to start a fight.

He leaned into the embrace, a hand splayed over her lower back pulling her to her tip toes. This close, with the feeling of his body heat radiating towards her and his holotags pressed into her chest under her layers, she let herself just be _held_. It was a good kind of embrace, the one that made her feel loose and needed, her lips half an inch away from pressing to his and kissing him.

Then a ridge on top of the cave gave way under the weight of the snow, the crashing of the drift startling them both apart. Penny smoothed and straightened her coat while Danse went to inspect the way the entrance had partially closed, face a bright red. The last slivers of daylight had cut out completely, the entire cave now only partially lit by the moon’s reflection off of the white snow. The pink glow of her Pip-Boy made up the difference.

She made a fire and Danse helped her heat up their dinners in silence. Little murmurs of direction came up, but they didn’t really _say_ anything. Their gloves had gone back on and everything had been tugged back into place, every occasional brush of their hands met with a quick look before they went back to what they were doing, blushing furiously. It felt like the awkward romantic pull she’d had in high school, the kind between stumbling teens that didn’t know what to say to express how they felt. After being married for years, this sort of regression sat wrong in the back of her head.

Eating in silence soon ended and they were left just staring at the fire as it consumed the dry salvage. She was mesmerized by the way the flames hungrily licked over the old dusty wood, chewing on her lips as her thoughts consumed her. Eventually, as the fire started dying and the cold crept in on her, Danse put an arm around her to quell her shivering. It was a hesitant touch and it made her jump in surprise, but she wiggled closer to him, nearly on top of his legs. Peering up at him from the corner of her eye, she sighed.

She loved the way his face looked in the low firelight, flushed from the cold. Leaning in closer, she folded herself into his lap, letting the heat from his body soak into her. His arms held her tightly, strong and comforting as the snow slowly built outside the little outcropping. She brushed her nose over his jaw, his breathing growing uneven as she pulled a glove off and reached up to cup his face. Eyes growing wide, he turned his head down to look at her.

Her thumb brushed his cheek, the both of them sighing as it grazed over the wiry hairs in his beard. This close, all the little marks and violence inflicted on his skin stood out. The shrapnel scars, the old broken nose, the thin scar that ran through his lip onto his cheek, they were all such a _part_ of him, the rough beautiful face she’d ached to hold for months. She brushed the point of her nose over his, his eyes sliding shut as he relaxed around her.

He murmured her name so softly she almost wasn’t sure if she’d heard it. Stretching a little closer, she pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, his body stiffening in surprise. Then he relaxed and turned his face, holding her tightly and kissing her back.

The kiss was gentle, his holotags pressing against her as he held her against his chest. Danse pulled away after a moment to press his lips to the bright scars that slashed across her mouth, the little touches warm and so _affectionate_. Trailing down through the longest one, he got back to her lips and kissed her like he _needed_ to. A noise rumbled in the back of his throat, the start of those needy sounds he made when she kissed him, an old habit she recognized as she shifted in his arms so she could hold him back, kiss him _harder_ , move their lips together with a longing kind of urgency. His were chapped, but she didn’t really care.

He freed a hand from holding her and pushed her scarf down, his lips trailing down from her face to the sensitive skin on her neck. She gasped at the contact, fingers threading tightly in his hair to hold him to her as he kissed all the places he had on New Year’s. Through the freezing air, she could feel the way her cheeks burned, the little hot places on her skin where his lips had just been, the heat of his body as he curled around her.

When he hit the collar of her coat, she pulled him free and pushed the neck of his sweater down. She didn’t get far on the column of his throat before he tugged her off, eyes needy and body a shaking mess. Pulling away, she could feel his arousal against her thigh and she had to stop herself from pushing further because this wasn’t what _slow_ was. Anything more and they’d almost be back at where they started and neither was really ready to go back to the nights where she pulled him into pieces.

Penny went to the opening of the cave to have a smoke while Danse calmed down. The cold air cleared her head, made her embarrassed for giving in and letting them slide back into place so easily. It tangled up her insides, made it hard to tell if she really wanted slow or just an excuse for what felt like stringing him along.

She didn’t get far with the cigarette, just crushing it when she was half finished. It tasted terrible and left her nauseous, but she was afraid of making good on her drunken resolution. She’d buckled so easily when she’d climbed out of the pod in 111, lighting up with shaking hands as soon as she’d found one of the packs strewn around. Quitting when she’d found out she was pregnant had been hard but then she’d had a _reason_. Now all she had was a promise to someone who’d very nearly broken her completely.

After hearing Danse snuff the fire out, she turned back to look at him. He’d set up their sleeping bags, only a few inches of space between the two. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, instead just holding his hand for a moment before zipping herself inside her bedroll. Lying there, she listened to him shuffle into his own pack, the feeling of his presence behind her making her skin itch.

She almost turned to look back at him, maybe _say_ something, but she stopped herself. Listening to his uneven breathing and quiet shivering was preferable, taking her mind off of her own freezing toes. The sound of him shuffling and tossing filled the cave, her own body aching to turn or fuss to try and warm herself, but the tension of the kiss was still heavy in her limbs.

The shuffling behind her stopped, though his breathing hadn’t slowed to his usual evenness while asleep. Penny turned her head a little and found him half-sitting up, body supported on his elbow. His eyes widened at seeing her turn, his hand a few inches off from touching her through the sleeping bag. Hesitantly, he closed the distance and she closed her eyes a little at the warmth of his touch.

She freed a hand and he took it, threading their fingers together. His eyes were almost sad as he looked at her, caught up in the sentimentality and nostalgia that made up their relationship. It broke her heart to see his tired eyes looking so unhappy, her thumb rubbing lightly over his own. He swallowed thickly at that, eyes sliding shut as he closed the distance between the two of them and pressed a kiss to the bridge of her nose.

It was light and lingering, her throat closing up at the weight behind the little touch. When he pulled away, he gently brushed his lips over the point of her nose before releasing her hand and lying back down. Penny lied there, staring at the black ceiling of the cave, trying to sort out what the inside of her head felt like, but she couldn’t quite pin anything down. Frustration, desire, care, concern, affection, they were a messy slurry that tormented her dreams with massive suits of power armor and imagination-built sex fantasies of her clutching at bed sheets with _him_ between her legs.

Waking up, she fumbled for her Pip-Boy and laid there in the silence that followed her alarm before wiggling out of her sleeping bag. Steeling her nerves, she pressed her lips to Danse’s face, shaking him to full consciousness. His eyes opened, bleary and still stuck in what was probably a nightmare. His rough hand cupped her face, pushing her hair back as she pressed a kiss to the bridge of his nose, repeating his old affectionate gesture. Packing up to leave after that was a quiet affair.

Penny had half a cigarette while she watched him beat a big enough hole in the snowed-in opening of the cave, crushing this one in disgust as well. They didn't speak much throughout the day, Danse standing close to her in companionable silence. The snow had come well past her waist in some areas and he had to carry her entirely for a few hours just to make ground. At the rate they were going at, it would be almost 5 days before they hit Sanctuary, and that was if they were lucky and neither got hypothermia.

That night they camped in a derelict building, the both of them shivering a foot apart. Embarrassment and boundaries pulsed in that space, and it stopped either from sleeping. Penny just waited until her alarm went off at 5 am, hitting her Pip-Boy until it stopped and she could lock it back on in peace.

The day passed in silence as well, Penny growing irate from nicotine withdrawal and a growing disgust for the stale menthol taste. As much as she tried to keep going for the sake of her temper and shaking hands, that night, after they’d found shelter in a service station under an overpass, she tossed her cigarettes into a snowdrift, plus all of the extra cartons she kept with her. It was a cleansing experience, made her feel powerful in the moment as the chilling air beat her and she threw her addiction out, but inside of the service station, she was reminded of how much of a crutch they really _were._

Danse didn’t press her about it, just letting her lean into him. It would’ve been silent, but the wind under the overpass was nearly deafening, a howling thing that made her ears ring and thinking nearly impossible. Rather than stay awake and talk, or see how far they could push each other before one stopped, Penny made them go to sleep. She was less likely to do something she’d regret if she was zipped into her sleeping bag and shaking.

The wind ripped screaming through the underside of the overpass then as they lied there, the thin walls and broken panes of the rotting shack groaning and shuddering under the force. It almost buckled, but the walls managed to retain their shape after the bout was over, and Penelope was left shivering in her bedroll. The extra layers didn’t do much when she had been freezing to begin with, and she was barely able to feel her toes. Her hands still had enough feeling left for her to know they were probably a few hours away from being frostbitten, so she had that to distract her from her chattering teeth.

Behind her, she heard Danse in a similar state. Listening to him shiver, her heart ached underneath her two sweaters. Not just to be held in the moment, but because of the forced distance and wobbly boundaries that changed every second. At one point she was in his lap, his lips pressed gently against her own. The next, his hand brushed against her and he jumped a foot away. And now they were liable to freeze to death in their separate sleeping bags in this underpass.

Turning around to say something, either suggest zipping their bags together or asking if this was _alright_ , she saw him already facing her. His eyes widened at her catching him staring, cheeks staining red. She flushed as well, curled up tightly inside of her cold sleeping bag as she continued to shiver. Wordlessly, he swallowed and looked at her for a moment before she saw him fumbling inside of his bedroll. The side of it opened, Danse holding it open for her despite the biting air.

She almost ripped her own sleeping bag trying to undo the zipper with her shaking hands. Finally kicking herself free, she crawled into Danse’s arms and wriggled in closely as he zipped it back up. It was a tight fit, the thing barely closing around them both, and she could feel how strained the fabric was against her back. Then his hands fit against her and held her tightly against his chest.

The shack shuddered again, Penny sighing and pressing her face into his shoulder as she struggled to pull her gloves off. It warmed up quickly for her, her eyes sliding shut as she managed to push up his sweaters and press her now bare fingers against his skin. Danse jumped at the freezing contact, murmuring something into her neck that she couldn’t really hear. His hands rubbed up her back and she sighed again, pressing a slow kiss to the little bit of skin on his neck she could reach in thanks for the warmth.

Their legs tangled together as much as they could manage, Penny toeing her socks off to get her ice-cold feet closer to his body. He was like a radiator, the shivers in them both gradually subsiding until she felt her bones warming. She really _had_ forgotten what it had been like in the cage of his arms, warm and safe. What it had been like to be so wrapped around each other and still that she could feel his heartbeat. What it had been like to just sleep with him holding her like he loved her.

She fell into an anxious sleep, secure in his arms. Cravings itched at her mind but she didn’t give into them or the snapping urge to fight with Danse. As much as the little things started to annoy her, she recognized them and he was gentle with her when she was short when they woke up. After every snap she softened and apologized, so _tired_ of being angry with him. Reservations and fears still percolated in the back of her head, but she could ignore them for the blissful moments she had with him.

Two days after waking up tangled around each other under the overpass, they came within bounds of a settlement she’d helped nearly a year ago. As she approached, one of the children who’d been playing outside called for her parents, the girl’s mother coming out to offer her a place to sleep. Seeing the woman’s face, Penny recognized this as the place she’d brought Haylen in July.

Her and Danse were offered a place to sleep and a hot meal. Not wanting to doom them to a winter of starving to death, Penny gave them what they would’ve been eating that night in repayment, plus a little extra for the bed and space. It was awkward spending time with the family, the three kids all exceedingly fascinated and intimidated by the pair of them. They all asked incessant questions about Danse’s power armor or his laser rifle until the parents forced them to bed.

There was a spare space in the attic with a bare mattress. After Penny had been shown the room, the parents left, shutting the hatch and leaving her and Danse standing there.

They looked at the one dusty mattress, the air in the room cold and a little bit of the snow outside visible through a loose board in the siding. Penny swallowed, worried he wouldn’t want to try sleeping on it together. She looked up at him, his face red and embarrassed as he stood there hunched over so he didn’t hit his head on the ceiling.

“You can have it,” she said, fingers flexing as she tightened her grip on her pack and bedroll.

“It would be… more efficient to share,” Danse suggested, shifting his weight on the creaking boards.

A grin tugged on the corners of her lips. “We’d be less likely to freeze to death.”

“More practical,” he agreed, putting his pack down and unzipping it.

They laid her sleeping bag out on the mattress for a barrier, then zipped themselves into his larger one. The fit was tight again, but she wasn’t going to object to how hard it held her against him. He was wonderfully warm, even if his toes were cold when he jammed them against her feet. It was pleasant and she craved every little touch and roll that lessened the meager space between their bodies.

Setting her Pip-Boy down on a small ledge of old crates, she wiggled closer to Danse on the mattress. The floorboards groaned and creaked under their weight, the only other sounds besides their nervous breathing. He held her incredibly tightly, almost like _he_ was afraid she was going to get up and leave, decide trying to fix whatever they had wasn’t worth it and cut her losses. As much as it made her chest ache that he’d missed her so badly, it admittedly made her feel better. Pressed against the hard planes of his body, she’d take anything that leveled the field they were on.

In the meager pink light from her Pip-Boy, she could just make out one of the feral scars on his neck. It stood out, jagged and white over the collar of his sweater. He shivered as she gently traced what she could see with her finger, breath catching in his throat as she pressed a slow kiss there.

“I was so afraid you were gonna die,” she murmured, wiggling closer to him. His holotags felt warm as they pressed against her bare skin under her sweaters.

“I’ve been injured more severely before,” he said. She felt him nose the edge of her shirt down and press a kiss to her shoulder, beard scratchy against her skin.

She huffed and moved her hand to his waist, pushing the layers out of the way and brushing her thumb over an old scar across his hip. “It was different. I don’t think I can handle losing you so soon.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He held her more tightly, her legs curling around his body

Her throat hurt at the tone of his voice and the warmth of his body. She opened her mouth to say something, but she took a shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears. The little reassurance chipped away at the fear inside of her, built a little more on the fractured trust she had in him.

Her body shook as she tried to calm herself down, Danse rolling them a little so he could look at her. “Pen?” he asked softly, brushing her hair out of her face.

Opening her eyes and coming face to face with him, she felt her face crumple and eyes tear up. She pulled an arm free and scrubbed them away, Danse’s thumb brushing over her cheek as he asked her what was wrong.

“Nothin’,” she mumbled, pulling him back to lie down on top of her. “Just missed you,” she said, lips close to the shell of his ear.

He sighed and relaxed around her, giving her a soft _I missed you too. So much._ She closed her eyes and held on tightly, loving the solid heat of his body and bits of bare skin she could touch. They were little points of contact that lulled her to sleep, dreams and nightmares blending into each other and leaving her sweaty and achy when she woke up. Seeing his groggy brown eyes in the yellow morning light cracked her chest right down the middle, her heart throbbing at the overwhelming affection for the little flecks of green and rings of gold in them.

He kissed her before they got ready for the day, hard as he sealed her body in with his. Her nails bit into his sweater, body arching into him and trying to savor the feeling of him so completely around her. The owners of the house hitting the hatch to call them for breakfast startled them off of each other, Danse red and Penny looking at him softly. They left, wanting to start out early and declining the offer to eat with them. Still, she took the bread they offered for the road, giving most of it to Danse and only eating a piece to curb her cigarette cravings.

The two nights after staying at the settlement, Danse took first watch while Penny took second. Enclosed shelters were few and far between in the space before Sanctuary, and rather than take shelter in a half-collapsed building and disturb whatever was hibernating in there, they camped in areas with little exposure to the elements, but minimal visual coverage.

Sanctuary came into view in the early evening the third day, the sky bleeding from blue into warm pinks and oranges as she approached. The snow wasn’t as bad as it was in Charlestown the closer she came to Concord, though it was still near her knees. It hadn’t even snowed this much when she’d been a child, though past experience told her that winter was a bit shorter now than it had been. Perhaps the cold fronts had taken that as a challenge to make surviving the season as difficult as possible.

Walking over the bridge and past the barricades, Shaun tackled her again. She fell backwards into a snowdrift, grinning as her son laughed, frost bitten face split in a wide smile. Danse pulled them out of the pile of snow before it consumed her completely, Shaun yelling at being lifted so effortlessly. It was good to see her son, and he’d graduated past nervous glances at Danse to outright stares. Progress.

She hunted Sturges down and gave him the parts he’d requested and he said he’d get the holoplayer up and running in a week if his schedule played out like he planned. It was good enough for her, and she offered to help him with what he had to do. Lessen the load and maybe help him with repairing all of the generators and space heaters so everyone in Sanctuary didn’t freeze to death. Preston grabbed her on her rounds, sheepishly asking her to help a nearby settlement and she eagerly accepted. There was something cathartic in cleaning the Commonwealth, a heady kind of power that she was the leader of a veritable army of people whose purpose was to just _help_ others.

That night, after she'd forced anyone setting foot in her house to wash themselves, and then following suit herself, Danse slept on her tiny mattress with her. Their legs fit together more easily, the heater in her room negating the need for so many sweaters. How they held each other was a shade more desperate, Danse outright moaning her name before he pulled her off of him with shaking hands. The way he held himself away from her had her smirking, the little victory curbing the cravings a bit. She settled for trying to wrap her arms around his back and peppering a few kisses on the back of his neck just to see him sweat it out.

That morning, she waited outside in the freezing early dawn for something to do. Her fingers itched for a smoke, and she tried to ignore the settlers that had come outside to light up. Just seeing them made her cravings even worse, nerves fraying until she was nearly busting for something to take it out on.

Walking back into her house, she waited in the living room, anxiously tapping her fingers on the wall and trying to remember where she’d kept her stash of cigarettes. When she lost interest in trying to hunt down 200-year-old nicotine, she decided now was as good a time as any to leave for the settlement. If anything, it would give her something to take her mind off of the cravings for the next week. Once she got over that, it’d be _easier._

She walked into the bedroom to wake Danse and saw him sitting on her twin, back towards her. Coming closer, she gently touched his shoulder and saw him fiddling with a folded piece of faded orange fabric.

“Your Brotherhood flag?” she asked softly.

He turned a little to look at her and nodded. “I was cleaning out my pack and found it at the bottom. I’d almost forgotten I was still carrying it.”

“I thought you left it at Post Bravo?” Her body felt stiffer as she asked it, air growing awkward on the topic of the Brotherhood. Another irate itch started in the back of her mind and she tried to ignore it.

Danse cleared his throat, clearly reluctant to answer her at first. “I… retrieved it after I’d heard of the Prydwen crashing.”

Penny pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, biting to keep the bubbling frustration and anger down. They stayed there in the tense silence, Danse’s grip on the flag getting tighter with each _tick_ on her wall clock. Then, she took a deep breath. “Why go back for it.”

It felt like a challenge, the way she’d said it. She was ready for something to take her frustration out on, and despite the past month and a half of things being _better_ , there were still the four where he’d shattered everything they’d _been_.

“They’re important to me,” he answered immediately and her guts almost felt sick with the surety in the statement. A moment passed while Danse sighed through his nose, voice dropping an octave. “Were important to me.”

“They threw you _out_ , Danse,” she said stiffly. _They wanted me to kill you like you were_ nothing.

“They were all that mattered in my life,” he said stubbornly. “I had a _purpose_ there.”

“No, I know,” she said, tone nasty and she was _itching_ for a fight. “They’ll always come first.”

He turned sharply to look at her, face creasing. “What are you talking about?” he asked, worry buried in the question.

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said shortly, hands jammed in her pockets as she walked to the other side of the bed for her pack.

He got up and followed her, stuffing the flag back in his bag and slinging it on one shoulder. “You’re upset over what I said and I want to know what’s wrong.”

“Let’s just leave,” she snapped, hands shaking and bones aching for a cigarette. She grabbed her bag and made for the front door, though the thought of going anywhere with him just made her even angrier. She hauled the wooden door out of the way, then came to the screen one, opening it and stepping outside before he got to her.

“No,” he said sternly, walking after her and catching up easily with his long strides. “I’m not going until we talk about it!”

“Fine just stay here then, like I give a fuck!” she yelled, slamming the storm door on her house shut as her cravings and anger hit a peak.

Danse followed her out, door screeching and heavy footsteps shaking the boards on her deck. “So you’re just going alone? Are you really so childish that you’ll go by _yourself!?”_

She didn’t turn to look at him as she swung her bag around and bent down to stuff extra duct tape and tools into her pack. “I’ve managed _just fine_ by myself before!”

The deck shuddered again as she stood and stomped down onto the frozen dirt below, breath misting in the air as she tried to calm herself down a little. Danse crashed down with her, reaching and grabbing the arm of her coat to stop her. “You’re making a _mistake—_ ”

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped, violently jerking her arm so he’d let her go. “I’m _leaving_ without you, and I honestly don’t care if you’re here when I get back.”

He released her, eyes clearly angry and mouth twitching in one corner. She took a deep breath and looked at him for another moment before turning and trudging away through the dirty snow. It crunched dully underfoot, the few settlers that had gathered scattering to get out of her way. She shoved past them, not looking up until she got to Mac’s house. There, she banged on the door before letting herself in and finding him trying to dress Duncan.

“You’re coming with me,” she said, tossing him his coat.

He caught it in one hand, straightening up while his son was held in his other arm. “You’re not takin’ Danse?”

“I’m taking _you_.”

MacCready looked at her for a second, adjusting his son as he squirmed in his grip. Penny stared back, lips pressed together and blood still simmering and she _wished_ she didn’t see the way he figured her out so easily.

“What am I gonna do with Duncan?” he asked, looking at her sideways.

“Shaun can watch him.”

“Shaun’s _eleven.”_

“He’s more responsible than half the people around here!”

He grumbled, knowing she wasn’t going to let this go. “Lemme get my things,” he said, handing her his son.

He was ready to go quickly, Duncan holding still and shy as she held him. Walking back to her house, she spotted Danse’s power armor still on the dock, though he was nowhere in sight. She didn’t go inside, not wanting to risk seeing him, so she called for Shaun until he came out. Seeing him, she saw his face was red and puffy.

Penny passed Duncan to his father, reaching for her son. “Were you crying?” she asked softly, cupping his freckled face.

He scrubbed at his face with the arm of his coat. “No,” he mumbled, not looking at her.

“Did I scare you?” she asked, turning him so she could see his eyes. The gunmetal blue and brown flecks were even more clearly hers when they were red from crying.

He shuffled anxiously in place, gaze flicking to the ground and then back to her. “I’ve never heard you yell like that, and now you’re leaving again.” His voice was raspy and quiet and just the thought that she’d upset him so badly made her chest ache.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said softly, pulling him into hugging her. She rested her chin on the crown of his head, rubbing his back as he held on. “I just had a fight, and I’ll be back in a week tops.”

“Promise?” he asked, voice muffled by her coat.

She pulled away and pressed a few kisses to his red cheeks until he smiled for her. “I promise,” she said, grinning at how his eyes almost closed whenever he smiled. _Genuine, just like Nate._

The grin grew a little sadder as she stared at him a moment longer. She let Shaun go and ran a hand down her face and asked him to please watch Duncan while she was out with MacCready. Shaun seemed eager for it, always ready to help out, and he took Duncan’s hand and waited while Mac said goodbye. Then they watched while their children walked back into her house.

“You gonna tell me what Shaun was talkin’ about?” MacCready asked as they turned for the bridge.

Penny felt her expression sour, mouth mashing into a line. “Ask me again after I’ve shot something.”

He laughed, grinning like an idiot as they passed the barricades. Blessedly, he didn’t keep talking, but she had to live with the feeling that he _knew_ and was just biding his time until she let him tell her that letting Danse back in was a mistake. Maybe it had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took an extra two days. it turned out a bit longer than i'd anticipated and this is finals week.
> 
> oh yeah, and i made a little character sheet for penny, if you're curious as to what she looks like. it's colored and stuff so you can see that. it's [here](http://jellopunch.tumblr.com/post/143419216883/i-made-a-little-outfit-reference-sheet-for-penny)


	6. For Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I couldn’t sleep either.” He rubbed at his eyes and then the back of his neck. “I was thinking.”
> 
> “Well, I’ve been thinking too. I realized something when I was gone,” she said, fixing the way the sheets had tangled around her legs. “When I was talking to MacCready.”
> 
> “What could he have possibly said.”
> 
> “I don’t have the right to make you move on, or choose when or how you do it.” She took a deep breath and pulled her blanket tighter around herself, rubbing some warmth back into her arms. “I should’ve figured it sooner, but I don’t _want_ to change you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took longer than expected to make, but hey, here we are
> 
> also i put out a little mix of some of the songs i listen to when i write this fic to get in the mood [@8tracks](http://8tracks.com/covertcalligrapher/electric-sheep)

In late May of the year before, the Minutemen had grown to such a size and possessed such a large base of believers, that Preston approached Penny about retaking the Castle. When he told her of the sea monster that had risen out of the bay and smashed the base to pieces, she could feel a headache starting in the base of her skull, but she agreed to rebuild it. Knowing that whatever was still burrowed in the bay would surely not take kindly to the foot traffic that would be coming through soon, she had the forethought to bring a missile launcher.

Preston went a day ahead of her while she stayed at Sanctuary and debated over who to take with her. Settling on Danse wasn’t hard, though he grumbled something about how the _effort to save a dying charity_ wouldn’t be worth it. When she’d immediately turned around and asked Nick if he’d like to come instead, Danse had snapped his mouth shut. It had been hard hiding her grin, taking a little satisfaction in how easy it was to play him sometimes. There was heavy affection in her chest for him, even with how tiring he could be.

Plus, she needed someone who could carry a rocket launcher without getting winded.

The hike to the Castle took seven days. Coming closer, the smell of salt spray and carrion grew stronger. The undertones of garbage she remembered as a child weren’t as present, though, the centuries washing much of it away.

A mirelurk, small and stunted, was clicking by the shore on the way to the Castle. Penny cleared it in two shots, the rounds easily punching through the soft undersides of the creature. She jogged up to it and kicked it just to make sure, wrinkling her nose as she noticed what it had been doing on the shore.

“What the hell are these things?” she asked, forcing the mirelurk aside to look at the bloated carcass it had been eating.

Danse peered down at the pink creature in the sand. “Numerous scribes have proposed that they evolved from animals in the order _cetacea.”_

“ _Looks_ like a gnarly dolphin,” she muttered, poking at it with the nose of her rifle. “You can tell me _that_ , but you didn’t know what a shark was?”

He frowned, blushing in embarrassment. “I do not have the benefit of a pre-war education.”

She looked up at him sideways, shielding her eyes from the late afternoon sun. “I know,” she said, heart softening for him. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

He said it was alright and she knocked on his armor so he’d bend down. She gave him a quick kiss and he blushed even further, pressing his lips to the bridge of her nose before they continued back up the trail to Fort Independence.

It was a crumbling shell of what it used to be, parts of it having fallen into the bay and standing half-submerged in the oily water. Penny examined the spare rooms in the Castle, piling as many of the weapons from the armory onto Danse as he could handle. She took the rocket launcher she’d brought, struggling to really carry it, while he took the spare she found. He made a face at being shoveled with all of the extras, but she pulled him down and kissed his cheek, thanking him for carrying it for her.

He still made a slight face, but he was an embarrassing shade of red then.

Outside, they started the radio and the mirelurk queen burst out of the bay, the parts of her that were unsettlingly recognizable as a crustacean somehow even worse than the chitinous extras. She smacked part of the south wall over just to start, Danse taking the brunt of the masonwork with his power armor. He fired a rocket at her, taking two of her legs off and effectively crippling her. Penny struggled to fire own rocket, but managed, taking her in the main segment of her soft body.

The queen reared back from the blast, a large part of her shell blown clean off. Penny fumbled with another rocket and slid it into place, fighting to lift it back onto her shoulder. To her left, Danse was busy getting overwhelmed by the outpouring of mirelurks from the bay, the spare rocket launcher lying in the dirt as hatchlings crawled over it.

Penny turned away and fired at the queen again, the blast taking half of her left claw, along with part of what was left of the south wall. A crumbling piece of concrete burst out and took Penny in the left side of her chest, the rebars sticking out of the block slashing two long gashes into her side.

She dropped the rocket launcher and grabbed her side, falling to the ground in a panic. Hot blood poured out from between her fingers, made her clumsy and slippery as she fumbled for a stimpak to just get it to clot and _praying_ it hadn’t popped her lung. With the adrenaline and nervous panting, it wasn’t likely she’d notice a collapsed lung until it was too late.

Lying on the ground and jamming the stimpak into her thigh, she watched with bleary eyes as Danse saw her and the sheer _terror_ flash on his face before it was replaced with his usual stern focus. He ran to her and grabbed her dropped rocket launcher, stomping on two of the hatchlings that had nearly gotten to her to burrow into her rapidly unresponsive body.

The vacuum sound of the rocket launcher felt far away in her ears, feet numbing and body getting colder despite the heat. It exploded not far away from her and she felt the ground shake as the queen took the rocket to the main segment of her body again and fell down, body still twitching as her rudimentary nervous system died piece by piece.

Penny'd passed out from pain and blood loss after that, succumbing to her low threshold for bodily harm. A few hours later, she woke up in one of the smaller side rooms in the Castle. It was mostly closed off, one part of the interior wall crumbled away so a few shafts of late evening light filtered in. It glittered in the dust moats, gold and pink, and as far as first things to see after a near-death experience, it was pretty nice.

She groaned, testing her limbs and finding them too heavy to lift. To her right, she heard someone adjust their seat in a rickety chair. Only one person had the time and anxious capacity to sit next to her and worry for hours while she slept.

“Hey Danse,” she said softly. She turned a little to face him, eyelids heavy but she still smiled a little just at the sight of the filtered golden light shining around him from behind.

“Going without power armor was a foolhardy idea,” he said stiffly from the side of her bed.

 _We’re starting off like_ that _, then._ “I would’ve died from heatstroke before we got here, big guy,” she mumbled, shifting to kick her blanket off. “It’s wicked hot out.”

“You could’ve died when those rebars speared you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair before rubbing his eyes. “Or when you almost fell into a pool of acid, or were nearly swarmed by the hatchlings that burst out of the ground.”

“You’re too protective,” she huffed, wiggling around to face him. Her side throbbed dully and she had to wonder at just how much med-x she’d been given. She was sure if she tried to sit up she’d find out, but the pleasant lightness in her limbs gave her a good idea.

“It wasn’t worth the risk to go up against that _abomination_ , Penny.”

“It was a Queen,” she said softly, holding her hand out for him.

“Giving them titles that denote rank is ridiculous,” he grumbled. Still, he took her offered hand and squeezed her fingers gently, thumb brushing soothing circles over the back of it.

Her lips twitched into a smile, eyes sliding shut at the little touch. “I dunno. If I was that dangerous, I’d want people to call me a queen.” Her smile got wider and she turned into his side, feeling the two gashes on her side throb without pain. “I _do_ have a castle now, too.”

He’d made an unamused noise, but didn’t try to put her down. Perhaps it was her medicated state or the tenderness in him, but he just let her ramble herself out until she fell asleep again.

That had been eight months ago, and now as her life stood, Penny longed for the predictable easiness of what she’d had with Danse. He had always been one to worry for her, one to protect her, one who was willing to hold her. This back and forth game that had grown between them now felt like it was tearing her apart piece by piece and gluing her back together wrong. It had started as pure grief and anger at him for having the audacity to continue being around her, but now the blame for the newest rip in her chest was squarely on her.

It took an hour of trudging through the knee-deep snow before Penny had to sit down on a rock that was still sticking up through the ice. Holding her head in her hands, she groaned through the headache and shame in her skin.

“Something bothering you, Boss?” MacCready asked, leaning against the rock next to her.

“I feel like an idiot,” she said, words muffled by her hands. “I shouldn’t have left Shaun like that.”

“He looked pretty upset.”

“He heard me and Danse fighting,” she mumbled. _Half of Sanctuary heard us fighting._

She heard him pat around his pockets and then the telltale flick of his lighter. “What about this time?” he asked, smoke white in the cold air.

Her nose wrinkled, body _aching_ for a cigarette. “Can you not do that right now?”

He raised an eyebrow but crushed the cigarette against the rock without complaint. “Does that have anything to do with Danse?”

 _Yes._ “I’m quitting,” she sighed, pulling her hat tighter down to cover her ears. “New Year’s resolution.”

“That’s new.” They were quiet, the white ground blinding Penny so she shut her eyes against it. ”What happened while you were gone last time?” Mac asked flatly, cutting to the chase.

“I’m with Danse again,” she said, covering her face with her hands. _At least I think I am._

MacCready groaned immediately, and she peered out from between her fingers to see him rolling his eyes at her. “Don’t make that face at me!” she snapped.

“He _left_ you, Penny!”

“I fucking _know_ that, Mac!” She took a deep breath and let it out, pulling a leg up onto the rock and hugging it. “I _know_ , but things were going okay for a while. We talked a lot, and then we were really _together_ again.

“I was irate already over quitting, then I saw he still had his Brotherhood flag, and I just picked a fight for no reason.” The look on Danse’s face when she’d screamed at him was stuck in her head, the combination of shock, anger, and hurt making her feel sick to her stomach. “And Shaun’s sensitive. He got upset hearing me yell so much.”

“He’s nothing like you in that department, that’s for sure.” He looked out over the white expanse with her, tipping his hat back a little.

She pressed her fingers into her eyes, seeing the bright colors explode behind her eyelids. “He’s like Nate. Sensitive and sweet.” _He sure can pine like I do, though._

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, jamming his hands deep into his pockets. “He misses you a lot when you’re gone, you know.”

The corners of her mouth twitched and she smoothed a hand down her face. A combination of work and atonement for some of the greater mistakes she’d made in her life kept her out often, but she’d never really considered what it must’ve felt like for her son to worry about her while she was out. He’d said he was proud she was his mother, that he liked all of the friends he’d made at Sanctuary, that he was glad she’d saved him from the Institute, and in the months since pulling him out of the ground with her, she’d come to love him more than she ever thought she was _capable_ of loving.

“I don’t wanna think about it right now,” she mumbled, kicking off of the rock and trudging through the snow.

“I’m here when you wanna talk then, Boss,” he said, footsteps crunching after her.

She didn’t answer, content to just stew in her own head and mire of regret. After a few more minutes of silent walking, though, Penny bumped his shoulder. “You know, you never apologized for shooting him.”

Mac gave a short laugh in the back of his throat, not smiling. “Because I’m not sorry.”

They didn’t say much after that, just walking carefully through the pounded-ice roads. That night, they camped in the basement of a destroyed townhouse. It was a shell but it held up well enough. The back of the basement was exposed to the air though, the half of the wall above ground busted and bare to the outside. The hazards of building houses into hills, Penny guessed.

Mac scoured the inside and checked the foundation. It was sound and empty, and mostly dry. It even had enough broken crates and furniture for them to make a fire. Penny tossed down a tarp and then their sleeping bags while Mac broke down some of the crates.

“So, you wanna talk a little?” Mac asked, throwing down the chopped wood.

She snapped the leg of an old chair and tossed it on the pile, grabbing another piece while he tried to light a few strips of wood. “Not really," she muttered.

Mac just shrugged and got dinner out, clearly willing to wait it out. They ate quickly, Penny making a face at the taste of the cram. She hadn’t really been hungry in over a year, it felt like. She filled him in on what she’d said, the sickness in her guts for making Shaun upset, and the unadulterated fear that she’d just sent Danse away again. As she spoke, she could feel Danse’s holotags around her neck under her sweaters, heavy and obvious like a weight.

Mac listened and then talked just to fill the silence. It was nice of him to not berate her, and she could feel he was holding it back because she was beating herself up enough already. In a little lull at the end as he finished eating, she ran her hands through her hair and sighed.

“I acted like a little kid,” she groaned, tossing her cans to the side and looking up at Mac. “I mean, do you think I was being immature?”

“I’m not exactly the head authority on _maturity_ , Penny,” he said, crushing his cans and pressing them together. He stood and stretched, reaching for his bag.

“Right, look who I’m talkin’ to,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I just can’t believe I acted like that. I used to be so _together_.”

“Are you just saying you don’t wanna be immature?” he asked. His pack rattled around as he fished inside of it, coming up with a bottle and his carton of cigarettes. He held them up to her with an eyebrow raised.

“I’m not sure. My life has fallen apart three times in the past year,” she said mildly, nodding that it was alright and watching Mac light his cigarette with a pang of envy. “I’m allowed some immaturity, I guess.”

He turned the cap off of a fresh bottle of whiskey and took a drink. “It’s your decision,” he said, holding out the bottle to her. “And you’ve made mostly pretty good ones since I’ve met you.”

Penny let out a snort and took the offered whiskey. “I’m 61 inches of bad decisions and cigarette tar, Mac,” she mumbled into the bottle.

“If you _want_ to be upset, just say so.”

She made a face at him and turned back to look at the fire, rubbing her thumb over the peeling label on the bottle. They passed the bottle between the two of them for a little while, about half of it finished by the time her skin felt pleasantly warm and her throat hurt. Mac was just staring at the fire, eyes flicking around the flames. He was an adult, but he was only 23. Immaturity was a given with him sometimes. Then again, it could be a given with her too.

“Hey Mac?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the whiskey bottle before taking a swig. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

He crushed his cigarette butt on an old brick. “Shoot,” he said, brushing his pants off and sitting down next to her.

“You ever miss Lucy?” she asked, handing off the whiskey bottle to him.

He grabbed it and looked at it somberly, firelight dancing in the scuffed glass bottle. “Everyday,” he said softly before taking a drink. He passed it back and pulled his coat tighter around himself. “What about Nate?”

“ _God,_ yes,” she groaned, pressing the bottom of the bottle to the side of her head as she sighed. “He was better to me than I ever deserved.”

“You ever wonder how things would’ve gone? You know, if they’d been different.”

Penny looked out over the fire at the flurry blowing outside of their little open basement. “If I’d’ve grabbed Shaun, I would’ve been killed,” she said contemplating the bottle. She took a swig and closed her eyes, just feeling the burn of it in her throat. “If neither of us had died, I would’ve felt safer.”

Mac reached for the whiskey and she gave it over, watching him as he nearly drained it. The bottle came of off him with a loud _pop!_ and he squinted at the remains inside. “I get that. Everything feels like it’s not worth it because they’re not there anymore.”

“Like you don’t have the right to enjoy anything,” she agreed. “It felt like that for a while, and the blame on myself didn’t go away, but it got harder to dwell on.”

He just nodded and offered her the bottle. She declined it and he finished it off, tossing it behind him and listening to it land in the snow that had blown in. As they stared at the dwindling flames, he took a deep breath and sighed.

“Something wrong?” she asked, pulling her legs up under herself and leaning her chin on her knees.

“Do you still love Nate?”

“Yes,” she said immediately, completely _sure_ that she loved him. Mac stayed silent and she chanced a look at him and saw his face creased in hazy thought. “Did you ask me that because you still love Lucy?”

He laughed a little, the sound melancholy and drunk. “Picked me out that easily? Yeah, I still love her.”

“You look like you wanna say something, Mac.”

“I’ve never said it out loud,” he said frankly. “I’ve never had someone to _say_ it to.”

“Talking about it helps,” she murmured. “Moving on, I guess.”

He leaned back and watched the flurries outside pick up, a few errant flakes blowing in and melting before they even got close to the fire. “How’d _you_ move on?”

“I had other things to focus on, and life moves so fast out here. He wouldn't have wanted me grieving over him and running myself into the ground for the rest of my life,” she said, fiddling with the edge of her sleeping bag. _It feels cheap to say, but finding another person to love helped._ “Nate died over a year ago and I’ve gotten past it, but I still love him, and I miss him. I’m not _in_ love with him anymore, though.”

“Loving someone and being _in_ love with them,” he said. She watched him stretch and lie down completely, their thighs touching. “How to tell the difference between the two of them feels impossible sometimes.”

She nudged him with her leg. “I mean, I think it’s a distinction you set for yourself. No one can tell you when to move on.”

“That's one way to look at it, I guess,” he mumbled. He grabbed his cigarette pack and tested the weight of it in his hands.

“Maybe you’re not meant to move on yet,” she suggested, shrugging. “Maybe you don’t want to, not really.”

He tapped a smoke out and made a face. “If you believe in that destiny crap, I guess.”

“You don’t believe in fate, but you believe in _aliens?”_

“I believe in what I _saw_ , Penny.”

She sighed, halfheartedly kicking him. “I don’t wanna talk about extraterrestrials with you.”

He just snorted and mumbled around the cigarette in his mouth while he tried to work his lighter. “I think I need a few minutes of quiet.”

Sitting there while Mac lit another cigarette to calm the little tremors in his hands, the hypocrisy in her words really hit her. Thinking how others did had never been particularly _easy_ for her. _Moving_ _on_ to her had been a clearly defined path she’d set for herself, the methods and goals becoming twisted and torn apart as she moved along but she’d been able to achieve some kind of future that wasn’t the one she’d planned for. The bombs, Nate dying, every tangled and ugly thing surrounding and _about_ Shaun had given her a new future and she was _capable_ of adjusting as needed. Maybe Danse’s past, present, and future had always been along the same path, and suddenly not clearly seeing what was ahead of you wasn’t something he could just _move on_ from.

Sighing, Penny kicked the fire out while Mac set up their sleeping bags. Without question, he zipped both of theirs together and jammed his cold toes against her all night. The warmth of a body next to her was nice, comforting like it had been when she was a child, but the narrowness in his frame wasn’t what she _wanted_. She wanted to be _held, needed_ , and the little nagging fear that Danse could always just leave again burst into something huge and monstrous inside of her chest. This time it really would be her fault, and the blame sat heavily inside of her gut.

She woke Mac up early and they packed in silence, still rubbing the sleep and stiffness out of their limbs. They walked for the rest of the day after that, coming to the settlement about an hour after sunset.

The settlement was ultimately close by to Sanctuary and completely snowed in. A few children had climbed over the mountains of snow piled around the settlement as a fence and stood at the top. They waved excitedly and jumped around, one falling and landing heavily in the snow at the base. Penny and MacCready helped the little boy up and brought him inside of snowline, careful of slipping in the dark.

A congregation of adults met them, some sobbing as they told them of the raiders that had choked off their supply lines. Without those food drivers, they’ll be dead before the season ends! They’ve killed anyone that strayed too far out of the bounds of the settlement! Four of us were never seen again when they got their hands on us!

Penny calmed them down as best as she could, unsure of how to deal with hysterics. They managed to mark out where the attacks were coming from though, and offered her a place to sleep. Still berating herself for leaving Sanctuary like she had, she gave out whatever extra supplies she could. This was an easy thing to help for now, and she could get one step closer to shoving her regret down so she wouldn’t have to admit to it.

They only slept for a few hours before Penny woke MacCready up. Her conscience was aching her again and the desire for movement and distraction gnawed at her enough to wake her up. Mac grumbled and complained but it was just his usual. In her gut, she was warmed knowing he loved her enough to follow her anywhere. It was a fuzzy feeling, and she really _did_ love him like he was her little brother. It still left her dazed that she’d found new people she could care about so intensely and have it be reciprocated.

A few hours of trudging through the snow, and they found where the raiders had taken up. It was a small cluster of dilapidated apartments and office buildings, either an old office park or an ancient residential area. The buildings were all shells, broken and hollowed out and some parts buckling from the weight of the snow, while others still stood even under the tons of ice. As they approached in the early dawn light, Penny spotted frozen bodies and decimated caravans. It was clear they were dying out in the harsh conditions, half of the corpses belonging the raiders while the rest were murdered settlers or caravan drivers.

“The hell are all of these raiders even coming from?” she asked quietly as they crested the hill to the abandoned complex.

“It’s the cold,” Mac said, dropping to the snow and pushing up the brim of his hat as he fixed a stray raider in his sights. “Supplies are scarce, so they attack caravans for food and medicine.”

She watched him pull the trigger, the small sound of his silenced rifle lost to the snow. The raider slumped and fell off the railing, Penny watching as she landed in a drift below. No one noticed. “You’d think they would’ve learned by now,” she said as he lined up his sight and took out another raider.

“What, to pick a less dangerous profession?” he asked with a snort. They picked up and moved in closer, careful to remain unseen as more raiders came into view.

Penny sighed and dropped to the snow again, shuffling up and pushing her goggles out of the way to line up a raider in her crosshairs. “To stop fucking with my settlements,” she grumbled, pulling the trigger and dropping the raider.

Mac let out a short laugh and they got up and advanced, picking off small groups until the only ones left were the ones inside the intact buildings. The two of them stood close together, busting the door down and killing the four inside one, then the two in another. In an effort to save time, they got to higher ground and Penny set off a frag grenade at the base of a building. The remaining raiders poured out and were soon just seven more cooling bodies waiting to get buried by the snow.

They cleared the area of supplies and left, Penny halfheartedly covering a few of the corpses that were still recognizable of once having had a face in respect before leaving. No children this time, though there were two raiders that were dangerously close to gangly teens that she didn’t want to dwell too long thinking about. _They chose their paths, they made their beds, they dug their graves._

That night was spent in another abandoned townhouse, Penny flopping down and passing out quickly from the fatigue of wading through snow. She woke up with MacCready awkwardly sprawled across her and snoring. He woke up with a start when she rolled him off of her and told him he needed a bath.

The day was pretty good from there. Fears and nervousness still sat in the back of her head, but Mac was always good company. He always had something to say, be it a joke or a complaint, and it was nice. The weeks of tense conversations and silence with Danse had made her forget what it felt like when a relationship could just be easy.

They told the settlers their problem was solved and left quickly, making camp about an hour away. This one was an old shack she’d set up just for runs like this, and it was a dry reprieve from the constant melt of snow in her socks. As they dried themselves off and tried to warm up, Mac tried to feed her another laugh book joke. She’d groaned, playing with her lighter for the heat and distraction, and gone back to defrosting her toes, leaving MacCready and his shit-eating grin in silence.

“Alright, I have one for you,” she said finally, looking back to see him pulling on a second pair of socks. She flicked her lighter closed and stored it away, cravings subsiding for now.

“Yeah?” he asked, small mouth pulling into a grin.

“It’s awful,” she warned.

“Lay it on me.”

“What do you call a brahmin that’s a hired killer?” Penny picked up another dry piece of wood and tossed it into the fire, watching Mac’s expectant face out of the corner of her eye.

“What?”

“A _moo-_ durer.”

He broke out in a laugh at it, face splitting wide. “That _was_ awful.”

“I _warned_ you, Mac.”

He groaned, still laughing at it though. It was a good feeling between them both, that easiness of their relationship again.

Penny kicked the fire out and they slept with their backs pressed together again, bodies a little shield from the painfully cold night. Waking up and climbing out of their sleeping bags was hard, the air stinging where it hit skin, and they picked up quickly, both of them eager to see their children again.

The sun had almost gone down by the time they slogged through the snow back to Sanctuary. Every time she got back to it, it was like seeing the past through a grainy lens. It got harder to remember what color her car had been, or the exact shade of paint on her house, the number of pickets in her fence. The big tree in the middle was the same, as was the curve of the road that lead through, and the speed of the river that surrounded it. Each time she got back to it, a part of her was different.

First it had been the difference of her family, then the scars on her mouth, then each new mark on her body as she endured violence after violence trying to find her son and piece her life back together. Eventually the only consistencies with her grew to be the arrow shape of her nose, or the birthmark on her shoulder blade, or the drunken mistake of a tattoo on her ass. At this point, there was hardly an old piece of her that belonged there now.

But watching her son wade through snow that was almost under his arms just to be the exact _first_ person she saw when she got back? Those old missing pre-war parts of her just didn’t matter anymore.

“Mom!” he called out, cupping his mittened hands over his frostbitten face.

She plunged ahead, falling forward and tripping as a hollow snow dune took her down. “Shaun!” she called back, grinning just because it felt so _good_ to be loved so completely by someone.

He got to her finally and tackled her into the snow again, holding her tightly. He was excited that she’d kept her promise about only being gone for a week and chattered about what he’d done while she was gone as they stood and waddled back to the main road. Once they hit the street, he dashed off to collect and arrange something he’d been waiting to show her.

Looking around as she stood in the street, she saw Mac already holding his son and talking with him. Most everyone else had things to do, mostly taking care of the houses and the snow. Danse was noticeably missing and an agonizingly sick ache stuck in her guts at the implications of him not being present for her homecoming.

 _He said he can’t leave again,_ she thought, panicked and nervous as she started towards her house, unsure of what she’d do if he really had left again. _He’s never lied to me._

Rounding the corner to her house, she jumped, heart pounding in surprise and sudden relief. Danse’s power armor was standing slumped over in the dark, massive and menacing. She knocked on it just to prove it was real and that he wouldn’t leave without it. It was like a second skin to him, and he’d once confessed to her in a private moment about the vulnerability and inadequacy he felt while out of it.

Shaun hopped up the stairs past her and back into the house, the storm door creaking as it shuddered from the force. With a sigh, she looked around for Danse, spotting a carefully shoveled path to the back of her house. Walking along it, she heard a rhythmic knocking coming from the top of her house.

“Danse?” she called, craning her neck to see on top of her roof.

His head appeared over the edge, face shadowed in the early night. “Give me a moment!”

She waited there, awkwardly shuffling her feet in the shoveled walkway he’d made. A few minutes passed, his tool box getting tossed into a snowdrift, along with a sack of roofing tiles and a shovel. Danse came down soon after, carefully dropping himself into the path in front of her.

“What were you doing up there?” she asked.

“I shoveled your roof, and replaced the leaking tiles,” he said, wiping his hands off. They were dark and dirty, fingertips red from the cold. “I’ve been… keeping busy.”

She swallowed thickly and turned to look at the siding on her house. It was faded and stained, pieces chipping away in certain places, the wooden supports in the walls just barely visible. “I’ve had a week to think about what I said,” she said, voice small and skin embarrassingly hot.

The air was silent and tense for a moment, Danse's body language closed-off and defensive. “Do you have something to say?”

“I’m sorry for freaking out,” she said softly, tapping her fingers on the siding. “I let my anger get the best of me.”

He swallowed and looked off to the side, rolling his shoulders as he relaxed. “It’s fine. I… have been thinking about what you said. What I said.”

“Yeah?” she asked, throat dry.

“Yes.” He nodded stiffly and turned to face her again, face growing nervous and red. “‘ _Coming first.’_ You’ve said it before, what do you mean?”

Embarrassment burned at the back of her neck and she brought a hand up to rub it away. Her eyes flicked to look at the busted siding, examining the little divots in the plastic wood. “I thought you’d choose me over the Brotherhood.”

“Penny I didn’t… _choose_ them over you,” he started. He sighed through his nose again and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s difficult to explain how I feel about it.”

 _Talking about moving on_ , she thought, tugging on the cuffs of her coat. “We don’t have to talk about it now, just… I wanted to apologize.”

She reached out and hesitantly touched his forearm, nervous he wouldn’t reciprocate. Then he softened and took her hand, brushing his thumb over her knuckles. His fingers were cold.

“I missed you,” he said quietly.

“I missed you too,” she murmured. “I was half-afraid you really wouldn’t be here when I got back. I’m glad I was wrong.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. From the other side of the house, she heard Shaun calling her name. She peered around the corner of her house and saw Shaun on the porch, searching for her.

“That’s my cue,” she said softly.

He nodded and squeezed her hand before letting it go. “We can talk about it later. Your son missed you.”

Danse went back into her house and she let Shaun tug her around and show her everything he’d done with Danse while she was gone. He chattered endlessly about how Mr. Danse showed him how to fix a radiator or a generator, and how he let him see the insides of his power armor. The blatant excitement in his eyes was adorable, and he really loved telling her how Danse had commended him for the weapons and other things he managed to snap together. It was sweet.

Late at night, she made Shaun go to bed with the promise that she’d see him first thing in the morning. Walking back to her room, she saw Danse coming out of her kitchen and they played an awkward game of chicken in the hallway before she managed to get past him, kicking herself the entire time for not just _doing_ something about the ridiculous awkwardness between them.

Meanwhile, Danse slept on the couch, spreading out the folded sheets and bedding she’d seen earlier. For a second, she wanted to ask him to sleep in her bed, but it just felt too wrong to ask that of him. The suddenness and brutality of what she’d said had sat in his head, and she knew how good he was at turning things over. He’d probably gotten used to the springs sticking him in his sleep.

Unable to sleep and sick of the tossing and turning, she flung the covers off of herself and lied there for a second before getting up. She winced when her feet hit the cold floor and took the blanket with her, hopping from foot to foot as she walked to her living room. Pausing in the eaves, she bit her lip and swallowed thickly, steeling herself for the conversation.

“Penny?” she heard Danse ask. The couch creaked and his head appeared over the back of it, hair sticking in every direction and eyes tired.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said softly, still stuck standing there in embarrassment. “Can I… sit with you?”

He nodded and she quickly walked around to the front and sat down, careful of his legs. Sitting there and trying to rub the warmth back into her toes and clutching her blanket like a child, she felt remarkably small. The scratchy blanket he slept with chafed her a little and the sheet he’d put on the couch had come off a little and wrapped around her.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” she asked, adjusting as he tried to get comfortable with her sitting there.

“I couldn’t sleep either.” He rubbed at his eyes and then the back of his neck. “I was thinking.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking too. I realized something when I was gone,” she said, fixing the way the sheets had tangled around her legs. “When I was talking to MacCready.”

“What could he have possibly said.”

“I don’t have the right to make you move on, or choose when or how you do it.” She took a deep breath and pulled her blanket tighter around herself, rubbing some warmth back into her arms. “I should’ve figured it sooner, but I don’t _want_ to change you.”

He looked a little startled, eyes wide in the dark. “Thank you, that’s… Your acceptance means a lot to me.”

She gave him a slight smile, glad that he’d taken her apology. “What were you thinking about?”

He cleared his throat. “I want you to feel comfortable talking to me again,” he said, leaning closer and touching her thigh. “I don’t want us to fight and not talk about it for days.”

“I know.”

He hesitated before pulling her closer and grabbing her hand, holding it gently. “There’s something you want to say,” he said and he just knew her _so_ well.

“Some things about us just eat away at me,” she confessed, running her thumb along his knuckles. “It used to be so much easier, and now it feels like I’m constantly tapping for landmines. Funnily enough, _I’ve_ been the one liable to explode.”

He took a deep breath and sighed through his nose, voice falling into something low. “I’ve tried to be careful. I know what we have now is… fragile at best.”

“I know you have.” She reached up to his face and held it, brushing her thumb over his cheek and feeling the bristly stubble. “I thought I was trying, but I don’t think I was trying the _right_ way.”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes flicked down to his hand in hers, biting her lip at just how _much_ she felt for him. “I used to think just seeing you made me angry, but after spending a week away like that, I just missed you.” She met his eyes again, focusing hard on the soft brown in the dark room. “I’ve been holding onto a lot about what we used to be, but… I’m really _okay with_ just starting over now.”

Danse swallowed, just looking at her before he tugged on her hand. She climbed into his lap and he held her tightly, pressing his face into her shoulder and breathing her in. His hands rubbed up and down her back, soothing and comforting.

“Can I sleep with you?” she whispered, closing her eyes and pressing her face into his neck as she held him tighter.

He nodded into her, his hands still rubbing her back. Maneuvering themselves so they didn’t have to pull that far apart, they laid out together, adjusting the sheets and tangling their legs together to fit in the meager space.

She curled up with him on the couch, burrowing her face in his chest. There was such a base sort of comfort in the embrace, in the warmth of his body around her. It was relaxing with his fingers brushing little patterns over the dimples on her back, her shirt pushed up just enough for his calloused skin to touch her. Waking up after that, she felt cared for and soothed by the innocent intimacy inherent in the act, even with the soreness from sleeping on a lumpy couch.

The days after that felt very… normal. They had the domestic kind of predictability she’d always associated with Sanctuary. It was days spent with Danse and her son, just listening to Shaun talk and show her what he’d made or what he’d done. He was excited to just be around and she loved his bright face and the way he was always smiling when he saw her. It was just an easy way to be, and one morning, nearly a week after she returned, she was helping him adjust his pants and was frustrated with how she couldn’t seem to manage to pull the cuffs past his ankles anymore.

The realization that he was _taller_ now nearly made her dizzy with relief. It scared him a little when she’d stood up and pulled him into her chest in a tight hug, voice watery as she told him she loved him. He’d halfheartedly tried to free himself with an embarrassed _Mooooom…,_  but she just held him tighter and swayed a little as she hugged her son.

She sent him off to see Anne about getting the hem taken down and went back to picking through her junk box, mind feeling like a heavy worry had been taken off of it.

“Have a moment, General?” Preston asked, bending down and distracting her from sorting out the box.

She blinked up at him and dusted her hands off, standing. “What’s up, Preston?”

He rolled his shoulders, a few flakes of snow coming free from the brim of his hat. “The last caravan that came through brought what was left of the settlers that were stationed at the Starlight Drive-In. They said they were attacked earlier this month by raiders and were pushed out of the settlement.”

“Why are we just hearing it about it now?” She ran a hand through her hair and looked through the window into her house. Shaun was excitedly showing Danse something he’d made, clearly distracted from getting his pants let down. “Didn’t I put a radio beacon there months ago?”

“With all the snow, raider attacks have picked up and a lot of wires have come down,” he said, adjusting his grip on his rifle. “No one noticed anything was wrong in the settlement until they never sent out their water delivery.”

“Raiders again,” she muttered, turning back to her box and halfheartedly kicking it. “I’ll leave right now, then. I don’t want them to break it anymore than they have already.”

She got Danse and briefed him, leaving him to pack while she said goodbye to Shaun. He wasn’t upset when she said she was leaving, but he did ask her to be safe. It sounded just like when Danse asked her to, and she made a face and told him to remember to brush his teeth. He grinned at her and said it was a deal.

 _Maybe he’s more like me than I thought_ , she thought as she suited herself up. _Nate was never that cheeky._

Her and Danse left a few hours before sundown and walked through most of that night, camping in empty houses or caves for the week it took to get to the Drive-in. Approaching the settlement on the seventh evening, there was a raider standing atop a mound of snow on a watch tower that yelled for the others when she saw the suit of power armor looming in the distance. Sitting firmly in the crest of his power armor, Penny had a clear shot for the raider. One round later, and the woman was dead weight while her blood steamed in the snow.

“Help me down,” Penny said quickly, tapping on Danse's helmet. “I can see a sniper on top of the tower, and I’m a prime target up here.”

Sure enough, as he helped her down, a round just grazed over the arm of her coat. Danse held her behind him as they advanced through the snow, a few more rounds deflecting off of his armor in resounding _pings!_ before they exploded in the freezing snow. Two raiders tried to stop them at the door to the main compound, but they fumbled with their weapons and scattered. Penny advanced inside while Danse shot the stragglers, as well as a few of the bolder ones who thought they could take him with numbers.

Many of the houses and shacks the settlers had built had been smashed in, save the generator house. In a moment free of gunfire, Penny pressed her ear to the side of it and didn’t hear the usual dull roar coming from the inside. She moved onto one of the remaining three houses.

One had two raiders who appeared to be severely ill. They barely noticed the muzzle of her gun when she pressed it to their heads, and after they were finished twitching, she checked them. _Bleeding gums, sores, and jaundice,_ she noted, wiping her hands off and stepping away to search the room. _Radiation sickness and drug abuse for sure._

She came out with five stimpaks and three cans of food. From what she could see over the moderately shoveled blacktop, Danse had advanced far enough that she could see the fan of bodies that the raiders that had tried to escape had formed. Most of them were face down in the snow, steam still seeping off of the freshest bodies. Turning away from Danse’s shouting, she inspected the other two shacks.

One had the frozen remains of the settlers that hadn’t made it back to Sanctuary. Penny stood there in shock before she shut the door and leaned her head on the wooden planks to gather herself. The thought to bury them came to mind, but she shoved it out as she shouldered her rifle and kicked open the door to the remaining intact hut. The ground was too frozen anyway.

The house was empty and she didn’t even bother to check it for supplies before she left for the cafe. A distaste for the place was growing in her guts, and she was just grateful that it appeared that the raiders hadn’t had the supplies on hand to hang up dismembered body parts from the settlers. Wiping the raiders out started to feel like a _need_ , then.

She pushed the cafe door open and waited a second for the raider inside to fire before she jumped out from behind the wall and unloaded three rounds into his chest. He went down heavily, wheezing from the force and popped lung. The shot she let into his head echoed in her ears, and she didn’t hear the shuffling of the raider behind her.

The man grabbed her from behind and she screamed, dropping to the floor to get out, but he just fell with her. In the scramble on the tiles, they rolled in the sticky mess of the last raider and her gun got kicked away. He pulled a knife free from his belt and managed to get her in the side before she jammed her thumbs into his eyes. After that, grabbing the knife as he screamed and stabbing in under his collarbone was easy. Getting free to help herself wasn’t, however.

The twisted metal grating on his shoulder snagged in her coat and she couldn’t push him off, side aching and body shivering. She managed to tear her coat to get the raider off, pulling her body to lean against the wall with her gun while she checked the damage on herself. Feeling around her stomach, she was aware of the sharp pain when she breathed and how her hand came away wet.

“ _Fuck,”_ she muttered, pulling her glove off and biting down on it to help with the pain. The adrenaline of the situation still hadn’t run out yet, and she took the time to stab a stimpak into her side.

She counted off three hazy minutes on her Pip-Boy, fingers nearly jammed into the fresh stab wound in her side before the pain really _hit._ It was a radiating kind of ache that flared up in agonizing points whenever she tried to breathe. Laying there on the dirty ground of the cafe and trying to ignore the way her blood just slipped out between her fingers, she heard Danse’s shouting getting closer.

Two more shots from his rifle accompanied the muffled screams of a raider, and the ground shook as Danse crouched into the cafe.

“Took ya long enough,” Penny croaked, shifting so he could see her in the shadows.

His armor hissed and opened, Danse climbing out and scooping her up immediately. She squirmed, biting her lip to keep silent as he sat her on the edge of a counter. He pushed her layers out of the way and prodded at the raw flesh. Wincing, she shoved his hands away.

“Finish the raiders,” she said softly, pointing up the stairs with a blood-soaked hand. “Sniper’s up top.”

He ran his eyes down her again, face creased in a heavy frown, but he nodded. “I’ll return shortly.”

The stairs rattled as he took them nearly three at a time, his slumped suit of power armor staring down at her. She closed her eyes and ignored it, focusing on his footsteps until she couldn’t hear them anymore. Soon enough, she heard someone yelling and the sickening crunch of a body landing on the hard ice and cement outside of the cafe. Eyes still closed, she broke out in a grin and waited for Danse.

He came down and examined her immediately, a fresh spatter of blood on his front. As he pushed her layers out of the way and reopened the thin scab that had formed, she wiped off a few of the drops that had gotten on his face. His hands pushed hers away, now wet and red from her blood.

A needle and thread came out of her pack, and she fought him over the med-x she tried to stick herself with. He lost that one, and a few milliliters later she could hardly feel the three inch stab wound, let alone the needle as he sewed her back up. He tied the thread off and cut it, and she saw the shaky fear in his hands he’d been pressing down.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, pulling off his jacket and bundling it up. He put it behind her and helped her lean back against the wall, the leather and fur pillowing and supporting her back. Gently, he pushed her hair out of her face and pressed a kiss to her forehead before running back up the stairs.

Her eyes slid shut and she shivered, cold from the blood loss and weather. Time moved in a hazy motion while she waited for him, parts of it folding in on itself and distorting. In a better state, she would know it was the med-x and injury, but as she was, she was lucky she could register Danse carrying her up the stairs to an empty bed.

A few hours later, she woke up, dazed and with a headache. She examined the bandage he’d taped to her middle and the three target bruises from the stimpaks. They were yellow and faded and she guessed she was maybe out for five hours. Looking at her Pip-Boy, she confirmed.

Carefully, she got out of bed and stretched her legs. They’d cramped from fatigue and trauma, and she puttered idly around the small room while she got used to ignoring the pain in her side, looking at what was in it. She touched the rattling radiator and hissed, hand burning a little on the hot coils. There was a little stack of books and a few buckets on the far wall, and a broad window with duct tape crossed over the middle of it. Extra pillows and blankets were hanging above the radiator, still a little damp. She figured Danse must’ve washed them, judging by the dried suds stains on the floor around the staircase.

Slowly, she walked down the stairs, careful not to twist her middle too much. The stitches itched and she felt sore, but it wasn’t infected and she wasn’t dead. A small miracle at that one.

Danse was putting up pieces of the wall that had come down. The bodies had been moved out, and she could hear the dull roar of the generator shed having come back to life. Evidently he’d been busy in the few hours she’d been asleep.

“Need a hand?” she asked softly, walking up next to him and gently touching his elbow.

“You need to rest,” he said sternly, holding a few old screws in his mouth.

“I can still _help_.”

“Fine.” He put the screwdriver down and took the screws out of his mouth, glancing around for something to give her. “I need the tin of screws in my pack. Some of these are broken and require new ones.”

It was clear he was just asking for the screws to placate her, but she’d take it. He was afraid for her and he wanted to keep her safe but she wasn’t made of _glass_. She’d been hurt worse before.

She sighed and took the stairs slowly, careful to not upset her side. Tearing the stitches would be nasty, and on top of the pain, she’d feel just a little bit guilty for making Danse worry.

His pack was sitting on the floor under the bed she’d been sleeping on. It was a giant, cumbersome thing, and even on a good day she couldn’t carry it very far without hurting herself. She stuck her hand in to fish for the tin and immediately pulled out, cursing as she got a shallow cut on her palm. Unable to lift the massive duffel bag much more than a foot, she dropped it on the bed and shoved it, combing through his things until nearly everything was free. Finding the small hunting knife she must’ve cut herself on, she located the sheathe and slid it on before dumping it back in the bag. A small book, a few tools, spare rags, two changes of clothes, soap, she pushed everything aside as she searched for the little tin of screws. A few loose bobby pins glinted on the faded mattress along with a few extra rounds he must’ve picked up for her. His Brotherhood flag was still folded in a triangle and pinned, Penny grimacing as she stuffed it back at the bottom of his pack.

Looking around the messy pile, she found the little dented tin sticking out from under a fusion core. Pocketing it, she started pushing his things back into his bag. As she went, she counted the pounds in her head, getting upwards of 150 before she was left with just the little loose things that had spilled out.

 _He gets on my ass for picking up duct tape,_ she thought, picking up the little pieces and dropping them in the bag. _Meanwhile the man has five boxes of snack cakes next to two missiles._

Grabbing the last few glittering pieces, she spotted what looked like a stain on the mattress. On closer inspection, she lifted it and held a penny that was worn and dulled from oxidation. She turned it around in her hands, examining the ghost of a face and faint divots that were left of the mint year. The realization that _this_ was the penny she’d given him in May last year hit her and her throat closed painfully. She rolled her lips into her mouth and chewed on them for a moment, her hand smoothing down her front and feeling the lump of his holotags under the layers. Taking a moment to hold them tightly, she stuffed the penny into her pocket before she straightened up and walked to the staircase. The duffel bag slouched over, forgotten.

The stairs rattled as she ran down them, side aching and she had to stop on the middle landing to hold her stitches and wheeze. Continuing down them as she pressed her hand into her ribs, she saw that Danse had moved onto cleaning the pieces of siding of blood spatter while he waited.

“I have the screws,” she said, clearing her throat. She held them out and leaned against the counter, trying to even her breathing.

Danse took the tin and popped it open to pick out the ones he needed. Snapping it shut and pocketing it, he looked at her as he moved to reattach the pieces. “Are you still in pain?” he asked, watching her sweat as he tightened the strips of linoleum in place.

She took her hand off of her side and gripped the edge of the counter, ignoring the way the knife wound still throbbed under the bandages. “I ran down the stairs, I’m just winded.”

“Running with an injury could cause you to tear,” he said, turning to look as he slid another screw into place. He twisted the screwdriver and pulled away a little, absently tapping at the molded linoleum. “You have to be more careful.”

She scoffed at his concern, but the penny he’d held onto was still clutched in her hand. Trying to hop up to the counter, she was stopped by the blood loss and stitches pounding in her side. Danse looked at her, hands still half in the air. “Help me up?” she asked.

He put down the screwdriver and helped her onto the counter, hands on her knees and thumbs brushing light circles on her.

“Come here,” she said softly, reaching out for him.

He shuffled closer, her legs pulling him to lean into the counter. His hands moved to her hips, leaning down while she stretched a little to press her lips to the side of his jaw. Brushing the point of her nose over his cheek, she left a few light kisses on the edge of his mouth before leaving one on his chin.

“Where’s this coming from?” he murmured, pulling away slightly and pressing a kiss to the bridge of her nose. His hands slid up and down her sides, mindful of her wound.

“I just want to,” she said.

He almost tried to hide the little smile that grew in a soft kiss to her lips, but she could still feel it. She let him deepen the kiss for a moment before she pulled away. Leaning away from him slightly, her hands moved from his hips to pat around her pockets. Coming up with the penny she’d found in his pack, she held it up for him to look at.

He took it from her and stepped back to examine it. “Where did you get this?” he asked after a pause, face far away as he looked at the old coin.

“I found it when I was searching through your pack,” she said. She held up her hand to show him the little nick from the knife. “I cut myself reaching inside, so I dumped it out to find your screws and there it was.”

He looked at the cut on her hand, but it was already mostly closed from the stimpaks still working her. “Why did you take it?” The penny flashed in his hands, a few parts still shining through the months he must’ve kept it.

“I didn’t know you’d kept it.” She cleared her throat and gently rubbed his forearm, getting him to look at her face. “This is the same one from last year, right?”

His eyes flicked back to the scuffed coin and his voice was rough with raw emotion. “I had no reason to scrap it. You’ve… always meant too much to me to get rid of it.”

Tears pricked a little at the back of her eyes just at the simple sentimentality and effort of holding onto something so small. She touched her chest and felt the slight lump of his holotags under her sweaters, holding them lightly. Danse raise an eyebrow and she reached under her collar and hooked her thumb around the beaded silver chain, pulling them free. He swallowed hard and reached for them, brushing his thumb over his face in the cracked quartz screen.

“You kept these?” he asked softly, looking back to her.

“I didn’t _want_ to move on,” she murmured, closing her hand around his own and holding his holotags together. Consciously, she’d wanted to be done with him, _wanted_ to hate him so completely she could throw away his holotags, the shirts he’d left behind, beat out the way her bedsheets still smelled like him, but she’d never been able to do any of it.

Danse pulled her into a kiss, the entire act so unabashedly passionate that it made _her_ flush. He held himself against her, body curving so he could press as closely as possible. It was all tight, the press of his holotags between their bodies obvious and she figured he must get _something_ out of knowing just how much she’d always cared.

She pushed him off before it went on for too long, sure he could just keep kissing her for hours. He had before, but her body felt grimy and bloody, and Danse smelled like power armor grease, sweat, and blood. It wasn’t a good combination, and she told him as much. He’d grumbled, but carried her up the staircase back to the little room near the top when she asked.

With the radiator repaired, she could clean herself without fear of freezing to death. When she’d padded over to the corner and pulled out the bucket and filled it with snow from the windowsill, Danse raised an eyebrow. Setting it on the radiator to wait for it to melt enough to wash herself, she pulled out her soap and a washcloth. After seeing her remove her first sweater and swish around the bucket to get it to melt faster, he gave her a weak excuse and almost ran down the staircase to get away. She smirked as she tested the lukewarm water, relieved and even finding it cute how nervous he was about seeing her naked.

She’d almost stripped down completely when he came up the stairs again and gently slid a towel towards her before fleeing. It felt worn and old in her fingers, but she appreciated the sentiment of it. Even if it was one of the ones from a cabinet downstairs, threadbare and old, it was the little things between them that counted the most.

The room was still cold, and she shivered as she washed herself. Legs were first, bending over painful, but not impossible, and she moved up from there. Dry bathing was never fun, and the lukewarm water quickly chilled and made her skin pebble from the freezing air. Lastly, she peeled off the bandage on her torso and gingerly washed around the bloody stitches and half-healed scar tissue from the knife. It was a painful ordeal and left her panting, bracing herself against the wall for a few minutes while she waited for the throbbing to stop.

Danse came up the stairs when she called for him after dressing herself again. She stayed in the corner of the room and took their inventories while he washed himself too. The wall was fascinating to her and she took her time counting out each stimpak and syringe of med-x to take her mind off of her stitches and the hurried scrubbing from Danse.

Once, she looked over her shoulder and caught him still dressing. She’d turned away immediately, red and flushed, and focused on organizing their packs again. Halfway through counting their fusion cells, she heard the stairs rattle when he went to dump the water out. She slumped back on the bed and let her head hit the end of the mattress, sighing. The floorboards groaned as she shuffled around and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, listening to his heavy footsteps as he jogged back up.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked. His footsteps had stopped and she could feel him looming as he stood over her.

She took her hands away and looked up at him, his form menacing from this angle. “Just waiting for you.”

His lips pulled into a small smile and he bent down to her level, kneeling. “How is your injury?”

“It’s okay,” she said softly, letting her eyes slide shut. She leaned her head back a little and tilted her chin up, grinning slightly when he lightly kissed the bridge of her nose. “Better, now.”

“You should rest,” he murmured, face still close to hers. He brushed his nose over her own, then across her cheek.

She licked her lips, throat suddenly dry. “It’s late,” she said quietly, reaching up and cupping his face. “Sleep with me?”

Her eyes opened to see him with his closed, face moving to kiss her palm. “If you think it’s alright.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t, Danse.”

A small smile cropped up on his face, eyes still closed but his expression was serenely happy. They shuffled around, careful of her bandage, and zipped their sleeping bags together. He climbed in after her, curling around her so his face was in her neck, arms holding her. She threaded a hand in his hair, gently pulling at the thick black strands.

“You know,” she said after a few minutes of soft silence, fingers playing with his hair. “I accidentally looked at you when you were dressing.”

He tensed a little, the arm underneath her flexing. “I saw your tattoo when I brought you the towel,” he confessed.

She broke out in a grin, endeared by the embarrassment in his voice. “The one on my ass? How’d you like it?”

“It’s an… interesting shape,” he said slowly, lips brushing against her pulse as he spoke. “It wouldn’t be my first choice.”

“It's a kiss. I got drunk in college and went out with my friends. Next morning, I wake up with a hangover and my ass is killing me.” She explained, yawning and pulling him a little closer. “I think I was dared, but I’m not so sure.”

He chuckled a little, nuzzling his nose into the juncture of her neck as he adjusted himself around her. She shuffled again, side aching from the position his body had put her hips into. Danse raised himself a little to look at her.

“Are you alright?”

“‘M fine.” She shuffled around again, rubbing at it under her shirt. “It’s just a little itchy.”

“You’re sure it’s not infected?” he asked, hesitantly brushing his fingers over the edge of her shirt.

“Check on it then,” she mumbled, turning onto her back and lifting her shirt to the edge of her bra.

He shuffled around her and held himself over her, his knee braced between her legs. “You’re sure this is okay?” he asked, voice low.

She nodded. “Be careful though, it’s still sore.”

The tape pulled her skin as he peeled it back gently, trying to hurt her as little as possible. His fingers softly grazed the tight skin around the stitches, warm and calloused against the softer parts of her stomach. Satisfied with the new, pink skin that was there, he put the bandage back and pressed it into place.

Penny let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. “Satisfied?” she asked, voice small and shaky.

He looked up at her and immediately turned away, flushing darkly. “You appear to be healing sufficiently.”

There was a heavy silence between them both, Penny acutely aware of his knee between her legs and the near-constant pining she’d always seem to have felt for him. She murmured his name quietly and he swallowed thickly before echoing her with her own, the sound a question.

“Take your shirt off,” she said, voice low and eyes lidded.

She chewed on her lip as she watched him hesitate and think it over before sitting up completely and pull his shirt off. A soft noise slipped out at seeing the bare expanse of his skin and the dark hair that spread across it. The air pulled goosebumps out on him and he groaned quietly when she reached out and trailed her fingers over an old scar by his hip.

Their hands tangled awkwardly as he leaned down and kissed her, his eyes squeezed shut and mouth almost desperate. She fought to shuffle her shirt all the way off, breaking off of him for just a moment to get it over her head. The shirt got tossed over the edge of the bed and she pulled him close to her, moaning his name softly as he pressed hot, open kisses against her neck.

Her legs wrapped around his hips and ground them both together, Danse moaning into her shoulder and rocking into her again. The press of their bodies was overly hot, skin sticking and searing together as shaky arousal and longing beat through her body. She would’ve been happy to let it keep going, too, content to let him grind them both together in a frustrated tangle until she came in a shuddering mess, but the weight of him on top of her nearly crushed her ribcage, her knife wound throbbing painfully.

She yelped in pain and he jumped off of her immediately. He swallowed thickly and looked down at her, carefully holding his body up. A hand came up and brushed the hair out of her face, his eyes lidded as she examined his expression. It was flushed and his stubble was thicker than just a few days and she bit her lip, wanting to press her lips to the thin scar on his cheek that was almost too hard to see unless you were right next to him.

Her fingers ran up his back, feeling the ridges of his spine and all of the old scars from what should've been his childhood. Feeling those old knives and bullets and blunt objects, he was just so completely _human_ under her hands.

Danse sat up and took a deep breath to calm himself, running a hand through his hair. “You’re too injured, we shouldn’t continue.”

She huffed and grabbed his hand, pressing it to her exposed hip. “Just _touch_ me a little.”

He hesitated, clearly deciding if they could handle this new level between them. She squeezed his wrist, brushing her thumb over the back of his hand just to calm him down a little, and he did seem to relax at the touch. It was minute, but it was enough to get him to lightly graze his fingers over her stomach.

His fingertips left trails that made her skin prickle as he traced them across her ribcage. Her muscles jumped a little and she giggled when he got to her sides, wincing as the knife wound ached. Danse swallowed and bent down, pressing a kiss to the edge of her bandage and she let her eyes slide shut at the blatant reverence in the touch. It was light and _loving_ , his hands and mouth moving across her skin like he never thought he’d be able feel her again and committing every mark on her to memory.

The gnarly scars from retaking the Castle got the most attention, his lips chapped and warm as he kissed across both of the ten inch gashes that wrapped around her ribcage. Next came two other knife scars, a feral dog bite, patterned clusters of scars from a frag grenade, and three errant bullet holes. The faded white stretch marks on her stomach came last and she couldn’t help the way she gasped his name when he grazed the edge of her longjohns as he trailed over them.

His lips moved back up her body, pausing in the valley of her breasts to feel her heartbeat. His stubble scraped her a little, the sensation making her shiver. A bullet wound right above her collarbone came next, then marks from when a mutant hound had gored her. The ones across her mouth finally came last, his touch light and filled with adoration, and when she raised her right arm to brush his hair out of the way, he caught her wrist and pressed his lips to the feral bite scars there. It didn’t go on much longer past that, the both of them just taking comfort in the heat between their bodies and the reassurance that came with holding each other.

Danse fell asleep quickly, pressed into her side as she held him. His body was close, big frame warm and solid in her arms as his legs curled around her. It was a little awkward, both of them careful of her side, but it was peaceful listening to the radiator rattle and groan as Danse’s breathing evened. Her fingers continued to comb through his hair until she was sure he was out, taking comfort in the warmth of his naked skin flush with her own. It had been so many months since she’d felt it, and she’d _ached_ with missing him. But this _here_ felt like the real start to soothing the bruises he’d left inside of her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im very tired and this took me longer than i wanted it to. i started at work again and i had to go to a graduation, so my weeks been pretty hectic. anyway, tell me what you thought and leave a kudos if you liked it!


	7. Holographic Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t be _everywhere,”_ she said softly. The awkwardness from their earlier conversation bled out a little, though it still felt tense. She reached for his hand and gently held it, pressing it to the new scar. “Besides, I’m alright because you _were_ there.”
> 
> The implication of the statement hung in the air, completely unintentional but still heavy. He tensed up and almost took his hand off of her, but she grabbed his wrist and held him there.
> 
> She rubbed little soothing circles into his wrist, her other hand rubbing up his forearm. “Stay like this,” she murmured, her skin already missing the feeling of his.

Summer had always been a difficult time. Penelope had never enjoyed the heat, and those months were always accompanied by a dramatic change in her life. Some of them were good, like Shaun’s birthday and the night Nate had proposed to her, but other memories were darker things. One day in 2288 in particular, as the month rolled over into August, she found herself sitting in her room and staring at Danse’s holotags for what might’ve been the hundredth time, so many parts of her past swimming around in her head.

Her thumb ran over his face in the screen. It was grainy and the details were completely non-existent, but it was still obviously _Danse_. His hair was cut a little differently in the picture and he was clean shaven, but the eyes were him, as were his lips and the soft set of his jaw. Penny sighed and closed her eyes, picturing what he really looked like in her head.

Then a hesitant but loud knock sounded on her door frame and she jumped, eyes opening. She turned and saw Piper standing in her doorway. “Pipes! Is something wrong?” she asked, pushing the chain away and under her pillow, embarrassed at being caught looking at it for the thousandth time.

Piper stood there and tapped her fingers on the chipping frame. “I don’t think so. I just want to talk a little, Blue.”

“What about?” she asked, body turning defensively.

“Well… _this_ ,” she said, gesturing to the room.

Penny looked around her bedroom, frowning at the implication that there _was_ something to talk about. The walls were all still up and the holes had been patched, though the paint was chipping again. There was a pile of clothes in the corner she’d been meaning to wash for a week, and the remnants of the wine she’d had to put herself to sleep last night had spilled a little and stained a small patch on her nightstand dark red. Her Pip-Boy was in standby next to it, glowing a faint pink and gathering dust. She hadn’t touched it since she’d tossed it there when she’d returned two weeks before.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Penny snapped, turning away and almost reaching for Danse’s tags again before she remembered they were under the pillow. “I’m doing fine,” she said again, mumbling it just to make herself feel better.

Piper walked in and sat down next to her on the bed, her body heat stifling. “We’re all worried about you. Ever since you got back, you’ve been so upset.”

Penny turned a little and peered at her friend, taking in the sunburn and freckles dotting her shoulders. Her chest ached a little at the blatant concern in Piper’s voice, guilt slugging through her body for the distance she’d built up. “I’m just adjusting. Everything’s taking some… getting used to.”

“I know you miss Danse,” Piper said frankly. “But I can’t stand seeing you so _sad_ now, Pen.”

The guilt reared up again, and Penny swallowed it down. “You know what it’s like to just be _left_ , Piper,” she said, ashamed for making everyone worry about her and ashamed for how much she _missed_ him. “I mean this is different, but I’ve lost so _much_ this year, it’s just taking a toll on me.”

“Nobody ever has easy decisions to make,” Piper said, putting her hand on Penny’s shoulder. She leaned into the touch, body starved for physical contact. “For what it’s worth, I think you made a good one. The Commonwealth is safer without the Institute constantly looming over us.”

Penny snorted, no humor in the sound. “Someone has to make the tough choices. Figures it had to be me.”

“You made it through, though,” she said, sounding a little like she’d been thinking about what she was going to say for a while. “It’s like, after everything that happened to my family, I’m grateful I still have Nat. You brought back Shaun.”

“I guess I did.” Penny sighed and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, feeling the fan blow warm air over her.

“You sound like you aren’t sure, Pen.”

“When I first came back with him, I told you he was a… synth. He called me ‘Mom’ and asked to come with me,” she said, her guts still so twisted up about Shaun. “I mean he _is_ my son. It’s a weird situation.”

Piper pulled a half smile and squeezed Penny against her side for a moment. “I thought he was your son as soon as I saw him, if that counts for anything. He looks so much like you.”

Penny swallowed thickly and looked down at her lap, thinking of what the Institute had been like as it was coming down. The chaos was background noise to finding Shaun on his literal deathbed, sallow and sickly. Her heart had ached in a way she couldn’t quite comprehend when she was speaking to him, an odd disconnect in her head from the baby she’d had a year before to the old man who had her brother's face and Nate’s voice.

“Yes,” she said, picking at the hem of her shorts. “He looks _just_ like me.”

The air was silent save the humming of the fan. It shook and gently turned, blowing Penny’s hair out of her face every 30 seconds. Without the rattling noise, she wasn’t sure if she would’ve been able to handle how heavy the quiet was.

“Shaun asked me if I had any family earlier,” Piper said, talking to fill the silence. “I told him about Nat and he asked if he could meet her.”

The corner of Penny’s mouth twisted up, skin pulling awkwardly on her scars. “Was he nervous?”

“A little,” she admitted. “He’s very sweet, Penny, really.”

Penny shrugged her hand off, straightening up and keeping her voice level even though she felt her throat tightening up. “I know. I’ve talked to him.”

Piper made a face at the flatness of Penny’s voice. “You don’t seem that… comfortable around him, Blue.”

“You don’t know how weird this is for me,” Penny said, still picking at the hem of her shorts. “I don’t think I ever really registered _Shaun_ was the head of the Institute until I saw him at the end and he told me to just get away from him. And then he died, and it’s awful but I felt _relieved_ because then I could finally miss him properly.”

Piper stayed silent, her mouth open like she was trying to think of what to say but couldn’t come up with the words. A first, for sure.

Penny pulled a half-smile, rubbing at her arms in the face of the awkward silence. “You don’t have to say anything, Pipes.” She chuckled dryly, mind easily slipping back into darker memories of the parts of herself she didn’t quite like. “I was a bad mother before the bombs fell, too.”

Piper closed her mouth and cocked her head to the side, and Penny could feel her looking right at her. Shame for admitting what she was thinking stopped her from checking to make sure, but Piper’s eyes burned into the side of her face through the sweaty curtain of her hair.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Nate was the only one he ever laughed for and he always cried when I tried to hold him,” Penny said, sighing. It felt remarkably easy to talk to Piper about this, the woman not having a base high enough to judge her by. “It felt… _weird_ just taking care of him, like I shouldn’t have been doing it. I never even really _wanted_ kids.” _I love my son, though. For what it’s worth, I wanted him after I had him._

“Oh, _Blue_ ,” Piper said, pulling her in to hug her again and there was too much pity in her voice for Penny to handle.

“It was getting better by the time the bombs fell. _I_ was,” she said, quickly. Still though, she hugged Piper back tightly because she needed to be _touched_ , had to be needed by another human being. Horrible loneliness sat in her bones, heavy and draining, and she was just so _tired_ of losing people. “I just don’t know what to _do_ now, Pipes.”

“You’re the strongest person I know, Blue,” Piper said and there was such _conviction_ in her voice that Penny believed her, even if just for a second. A very best friend, Piper saw the parts of Penny that were too pretty for her to see herself. “I _know_ you can get through this.”

Penny burrowed her face into the embrace, just loving the feeling of being held. It didn’t matter that they were both sweaty and the fan blew by every 15 seconds to wash them both with warm air; Piper provided a sort of companionship and support that Penny was still finding out she’d desperately needed.

After a few minutes, Piper pulled off and suggested Penny go talk to Shaun. Nodding, Penny got up and followed Piper as far as the door to her room, stopping her nervously. Piper looked back at her, face curious.

“This is gonna sound ridiculous,” Penny said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Could you sleep in here with me tonight?”

Piper narrowed her eyes and smiled a little, looking at Penny sideways. “This is so _sudden_ , Blue!”

Penny groaned and looked away, skin burning. “You know what I mean!”  _You know I’m lonely and afraid of the dark, don’t make me_ say _it._

Piper smiled fondly at her, definitely her friend  _first_ and before anything else then, and agreed. Penny hugged her quickly, still embarrassed by the bareness of her admissions but limbs dizzyingly light from the rush of it. Piper didn’t bring it up as they walked out of her room, and Penny was glad for the silent acceptance.

In her living room, Shaun was sitting on the couch and fiddling with a fan. Penny looked over at Piper who paused and shrugged before gently touching Shaun’s arm and saying she’d see him later. She walked out and left Penny in the room with him, the air awkward and unfamiliar.

Penny cleared her throat, acutely aware that Shaun hadn’t gone back to fixing the fan. “What’re you doin’ there?” she asked, walking to stand behind the couch.

He jumped and whipped around to look at her. “I-I’m fixing this for Ms. Piper!” he said nervously, not meeting her eyes. “Sh-she said it was too hot in her room the other day, s-so I’m gonna g-give her a gift.”

Penny swallowed thickly, considering the sentiment of the gesture. “That’s… very nice of you, Shaun,” she said, feeling guilty at the way he avoided meeting her gaze.

He fiddled with the fan, going back to nervously work on it with shaking hands as he mumbled, “She’s been really nice to me.”

It was a little more awkward than she’d wanted it to be, the space between them tense with her own self-imposed distance and how odd she’d felt about him. It had been a strange situation, but in the back of her head she’d been _glad_ for this, to have him come running for her. Standing in the Institute as it was crumbling around her, he’d felt like a second chance.

“Wow, you’re wicked good at this,” she said, leaning over and watching him screw the compressor in place. “I’ve always had a tough time with wiring.”

“Y-you think so?” he asked and she could see he was hungry for validation and, well, a _parent._

She nodded and smiled a little, wanting to put them both more at ease. “You mind if I stick around and watch?”

He grinned happily, the stutter mostly going away then and the nervousness leaving his body as the little smile spread wider. “I-if you want I can show you how to build one,” he said, holding up the engine box, the loose parts dangling from his hands.

Her chest split down the middle at the way his smile caught his face. The way it curved up at the corners was so achingly familiar, the edges of his smile that were soft like Nate’s. Looking at the kind happiness in his face, she felt her heart crack just a little more. Seeing the freckles and little bump in his nose, it felt like it took something off of her. He had her gunmetal blue eyes and the point of her nose and the sharpness of her cheekbones, but there were little parts in his skin that were so _unmistakably_ Nate’s it almost killed her.

“I’d love to,” she almost murmured, gently ruffling his hair while her body ached with sadness and longing for what she’d had. First her brother and parents had passed, then Nate and Shaun, and then Danse had left. But her Shaun _now_ had a smile that crinkled up his eyes and squished the freckles on his face, and she felt like he could be a way to start over again.

She just stayed sitting down next to him on the couch and watched him finish the fan, carefully examining the way his hands moved deftly over the old wires and screws inside. Actually spending time talking to him wasn’t as bad as she thought it was going to be. He smiled and laughed like a _kid_ , the entire afternoon she spent with him feeling less like an obligation to a boy who had her face and more like time spent with her son who was made of his father’s kinder parts.

That day had been the first good once since she’d gotten back, and seeing what Shaun was like when he wasn’t nervously anticipating her melancholy moods warmed her unexpectedly. She wasn’t ever going to be perfect at being a mother, she figured, but she was positive she was going to try. Just having someone that depended on her like Shaun did felt good for her, a necessity to combat the loneliness. He wasn’t the future she’d had a year ago with Nate, but he could definitely be a new one, she figured. For them both.

Currently, though, it wasn't the hot summer and she was far too sore to be sleeping at her home. Penny woke up slowly, groggy with her limbs feeling loose and achy. Absently, she felt the bed next to her and was greeted by cold sheets, the impression of a body that had been next to her all but gone. Sharp panic rose in her at not feeling Danse there, those horrible nightmares where he’d left in her sleep reaching up from her consciousness to viciously grab at her.

She leaned up quickly though and opened her eyes to see he was sitting at the edge of the bed, a bucket of water held between his knees. A mirror was loosely resting on a ridge on the wall and he was looking at it intently, meticulously cutting his hair. The gentle _snip_ of the scissors reached her and she sighed quietly, heart calming down.

“‘Morning,” she said softly, stretching out and nudging him with her foot.

He turned a little to look at her and gave a small smile. “Good morning,” he said, turning back to the mirror to continue.

Penny fumbled at the bandage on her middle and peeled it away, feeling the new, tight skin and the stitches still stuck in her. She made a face as she pressed it back on, feeling awkward and sore as she lied there in her bra and longjohns. “How long have you been awake?” she asked, pulling herself to sit up and crawling behind him.

“Approximately an hour,” he answered, cleaning the bits of hair off of his hands in the bucket of water and running his wet fingers through his hair. “It was hailing earlier, and it sounded like gunfire. It woke me up.”

Her heart clenched a little and she shuffled so she could wrap her legs around his waist and pressed a quick kiss to his shoulder. “We’re safe here for now, Danse,” she murmured, resting her chin on him.

“I’m aware.” He rinsed the scissors off in the bucket and reached for the top of his head, precisely snipping like she’d seen him do a dozen times before. The scissors paused and he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Sometimes it’s not comfortable for me to resume sleeping.”

“You could’ve woken me up, too, then,” she said, her hands softly splayed over his stomach, feeling the coarse hair there.

“It wasn’t necessary,” he said, finishing the back of his head and cleaning the scissors off before setting them on the ledge. He took a deep breath and laid his hand over her one of hers, their fingers twining together. Her other hand, he took and pressed a little kiss to her palm, a slight smile in the act. “I like listening to you talk.”

She blushed, skin burning in embarrassment at the kiss and her sleep talking. “What did I say this time?”

“It was mostly mumbling.”

“Anything you could make out?”

“I believe I heard Shaun’s name once,” he said, thumb brushing over her knuckles. “When I got up, you rolled over and frowned, then said my name.”

She hid her face in his shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut. “God, that’s embarrassing,” she muttered, voice muffled by his skin.

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed,” he said while his thumb brushed over her knuckles. ”I’ve always enjoyed it.”

Her eyes opened at his phrasing. “You’ve _always?”_

His thumb stopped moving and she felt him freeze. “You’ve done it since I met you. I… assumed it was a pre-war quality.”

“Well, it is,” she said, adjusting herself so she could sit in his lap. “How long have you noticed it?”

He cleared his throat, voice just a shade embarrassed. “Since you were promoted past Initiate and we began traveling together.”

She tilted her head, wondering just how much he knew about her that he didn’t say anything about. “What did I say?”

“It was mostly ‘Shaun’ or ‘Nate,’” he said, clearing his throat. He gently pushed her off of himself so he could stand, stretching as he did so. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, so I refrained from asking who they were.”

Penny swallowed thickly and looked at her hands, idly drumming them against her thigh. “I… It must’ve been good when I clarified that, I guess.”

“I was honored by the trust you showed in me the first New Year’s I spent with you,” he said frankly. “I admired the courage you showed in attempting to find your son against such impossible odds."

“Impossible indeed,” she muttered. Danse didn’t say anything, but she could feel him looking at her.

Unable to sit any longer, she got up too and talked idly with Danse while she gathered her things for the day. They fell silent when she turned away and started dressing, Penny fine with the lull. Silences spent with him were better than forced conversations.

Her longjohns were around her ankles when he cleared his throat, standing by the corner of the room and holding his pack. She stood and stepped out of the thermal pants, reaching for her actual pants. “Something you need?”

“I wanted to know if you would be comfortable assisting me with my routine,” he asked. They both knew what he was asking, the months before the Prydwen had crashed seeing her sitting on his back while he did push-ups as a common occurrence.

A blush grew on her face, skin flushing at the thought of balancing herself on top of him while he lifted them both. “Why?” she asked, throat just a bit dry and pants forgotten on the bed.

“It increases the resistance,” he said like it was the _main_ reason he’d asked her. A hazy blush started to show on his face, and she couldn’t quite tell what _exactly_ it was from

She sat on his back while he did his push ups. There was something thrilling about sitting through the rhythm with him, the steadiness in his limbs lulling her into a cozy state. It was comfortable for her, this place filled with just the warmth of his body against her bare legs and his hot skin under her fingers. The peace and attraction it afforded her made her skin feel stuffy and warm as she watched him finish the rest of his routine.

She broke their packs down and organized while she waited, changing the bandage on her waist. The scar was almost closed completely, but it still pulled tightly and ached when she stretched. A little bit of blood came away when she tugged on a stitch, wincing at the sharp pain. Deciding that covering it and waiting for the stimpaks to finish her was the better idea, she cleaned it again and retaped herself.

Danse finished his set and cleaned himself quickly: face, arms, and chest. She watched him finish fondly, admiring how he looked when he was completely clean. The marks and sunspots on his face were clearer when the dirt was wiped off, the pattern of the shrapnel spray scars on the left of his face a familiar part of his skin. When he started to undress himself completely, she turned away and dressed herself.

She layered up, and she was careful to pad around her midsection before grabbing Danse’s holotags. The screen flickered a dull blue, her thumb brushing over the crack in his face. Sighing, she slipped it on over her neck and held the chunk of holotags and wedding rings. There was something freeing about wearing it above the layers of clothing, feeling the weight of it against her chest and being able to see the luminescent blue shine of the quartz screen. It was warm, humming softly in her hand.

The floor creaked as Danse came up behind her, mostly dressed now. His hands rested on her shoulders and she turned to look up at him, face softening as she saw him. They’d been mostly good since they’d actually started _talking_ again, and she was so desperate to hang onto these good parts with him because the angry distance would only be worse now than it had been before.

“You ready to go?” Penny asked softly, gently resting her hands on his hips.

“In a moment,” he said. One of his hands moved so he could brush her hair out of her face with his thumb while the other reached for the holotags. He grabbed them gently, the wedding bands sliding back on the chain and blinking in the cold late-morning light.

The chain fell back against her chest when he cupped her face. He leaned their foreheads together and brushed his nose over hers. She held his wrists loosely, letting her eyes slide shut as a grin spread across her face.

“What are you smiling at?” he murmured, voice low and a little hoarse.

She leaned forward and pecked his lips, still grinning. “You’re just so handsome,” she said, eyes opening to see he was smiling softly. “What’re _you_ smiling at?”

He blushed, eyes growing wider, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m glad you’re more comfortable around me,” he said after a moment, the pause feeling like he was about to say something else but decided against it.

Penny took a deep breath and let it out, the smile slipping away but the warmth in her chest stayed. Her hands tightened on his wrists and pulled him off of her so she could hold his face instead. “We both just need time.” _God, I want us to be better so badly._

Danse nodded, his eyes turning a shade sad. It had been such a hard time getting here but he pulled emotion so _well_. His big face was soft around the edges under the scarring and sunburn, and the pure nostalgic sadness in it cracked her heart right in half.

Quickly, she kissed him before finishing getting ready. If she gave in anymore she was sure he would be content to hold her all day and make up for so many years of never knowing what it was like to have someone curled completely around him. It had killed her to see how starved he was for affection and it was too easy to fall right back into holding him.

Downstairs, he climbed into his power armor after squeezing her hand for a moment. Lately, it was starting to feel like what it had been during the spring when he’d spent time out of it just so she’d touch him. In the power armor, he felt more distant, more like the abstract Paladin than he was Danse. It was an odd way to feel about him.

Outside, they worked on dragging out the rest of the raiders’ bodies, dumping them outside the confines of the compound. The one that Danse had thrown off of the roof the night before was crumpled and stiff, a frozen and bloody mess that made Penny’s face wrinkle in disgust as she looked at it. He was collected and dragged, along with the half-buried bodies of the other raiders, the snow left red and oddly stained when they were all tossed over the fence.

Then they came to the shack Penny had found the day before, stuffed with the bodies of the old settlers.

“What do you want to do with them, then?” Danse asked, looking around her into the cabin.

“We can’t just _leave_ them here,” she said, chewing on her lips. She tapped her fingers on the door frame and looked away from the pile of bodies inside, disgusted at the sight of the brutality and rotting flesh. “It’s wrong, and settlers won’t want to come back if the place is still littered with the corpses of the _old_ residents.”

“Burying them would be impossible, Penny.”

“I _know_ that,” she huffed, jamming her hands into her pockets despondently. Inside, her fingers closed around something small and smooth. Pulling her hand out, she saw it was her lighter. She held up to Danse, raising an eyebrow.

He looked at it for a moment before nodding once. A pyre was practical.

There wasn’t any wind that day, and even though it was early noon, it was impossible to see the sun through the thick gray sheet of clouds in the sky. Danse carried the remaining bodies of the settlers that hadn’t been so lucky to remain untouched while she gathered extra things for kindling and fire starting. There were nearly 40 bodies altogether, some of them too far buried under the frozen pile in the shack to get an accurate number. As Danse put the last ones inside of the shack, Penny tossed the gas-soaked planks of wood she’d gotten inside of the house and closed the door. She didn’t pay particularly close attention to the faces and figures of the settlers, but at a glance it was clear there were far too many children.

The two of them unloaded another gas can outside of the shack and stepped back, Penny flicking her lighter until a flame lit. Considering the tiny flame and the little point of heat, she swallowed thickly. Then she felt a light touch as Danse’s metal hand gently rested on her shoulder and she stood up straighter, throwing her lighter and watching the gasoline catch.

The shack burned for a few hours, the plume of thick gray smoke rising straight in the sky. It smelled awful, freezer burnt and disgustingly grisly. The frozen wood and bodies burned out and all that was left was the smoldering bones of both. Penny and Danse stuck spikes in the hard snow and roped off the perimeter, marking the area off for when new settlers would come in and rebuild. Come spring, hopefully, the bones could be buried.

She stood there, staring at the still smoldering remains and made a face at the smell.

“Is something wrong?” Danse asked, still hitting a few stakes into the ice.

“I kinda _really_ want a cigarette now,” she said. She turned to look at him and saw he was frowning. “That’s not good, is it?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it before glancing at the charred shack and then back to her. “Perhaps we should… move onto the other objectives at hand.”

She nodded and left with him, trying to shove the fire out of her mind. Other parts of the Drive-In needed to be fixed, the raiders breaking or letting most of it fall into disrepair. Penny spent most of her time repairing the pump station and water purifiers while Danse cleared out the remaining shacks and fence houses. After the purifiers rumbled back to life, she went to help him, crawling into the spaces he couldn’t reach to clear out snow or repair a fallen roof.

Later in the day, the clouds finally broke and instead of snowing, it hailed. As a few of the smaller chunks _pinged_ off of the crest of Danse’s armor, she spotted a few vultures that had been attracted by the raider bodies Danse had dragged downwind. Pausing at a particularly large snowdrift, Penny shot one of them. The bird was brought inside and cleaned, and even though it was stringy and dry, fresh meat was a luxury Penny would never take for granted again. A hot meal was the difference between six frostbitten toes and shaking too much to sleep in the frozen Commonwealth.

They ate quickly and quietly, Penny feeling subdued from burning the bodies. It had been morbid work and it didn’t feel right to feel good about herself when she’d let that happen to a place she was supposed to protect. The need for a _purpose_ now was what drove her, the sense that she could fix her home and make it a place to live again. This affront cut deep.

After she’d eaten, Penny collected more snow and hail to melt so she could wash herself again, giddy with the idea of being completely clean two days in a row. Danse didn’t leave the room as she waited for the water to heat up, and she looked at him before pulling her shirt off. His face said, _Is this alright?,_ and she nodded, undressing herself slowly to give him time to run.

She turned away before she was naked, surprisingly not embarrassed to think he might have been looking. It might have been that she heard him awkwardly undressing too and was sure he was facing away, or it might have been that she just wanted to see what he’d _do._ Though knowing him, he wouldn’t think to do anything unless he was expressly told.

They washed themselves in hurried silence. The room was almost warm enough to be comfortable, but the water on her skin cooled quickly and she was shivering by the time she shimmied into an over-sized shirt. She fought to kick her underwear and longjohns on, careful of the stitches still in her stomach.

Danse was already picking apart their weapons to clean them, more out habit than necessity at this point. Feeling on the lower end of how she usually did, Penny just laid back on the bed with her feet on the wall, fishing around in her pack for something to do. She came up with a baseball and just palmed it, grabbing a bottle from her pack as well. It must’ve been the one Danse had used to disinfect her the night before. It was half empty, and as she uncapped it to take a drink, she couldn’t help but think of what it had felt like to lie on the ground and hope Danse got to her before she bled to death.

She was halfway to trying to decide if Danse finding her body would be worse than dying itself before he spoke up.

“Do you like your tattoo?” Danse asked suddenly, startling Penny out of her thoughts.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, mind trying to catch up to what he’d said.

“Your tattoo.” He picked up the barrel of her rifle and wiped it out as he spoke. “Last night you’d indicated that it was a mistake and I was curious as to if you actually liked having it.”

She put the bottle down and rolled the ball in her hands, contemplating her answer. “I mean, I got it for the stupidest reason,” she started, tossing the baseball into the air and catching it. “But I think I do like it, actually. It’s such an old part of me.”

“If you’re unsure, then why have you kept it?”

“You have to live with your choices,” she said, feeling like the _expert_ on accepting what you’d done. Sighing, she grabbed the bottle again and took a swig before holding it out to him. “Why ask?”

“Many in the Brotherhood have tattoos,” he said, declining when she offered him the bottle. His fingers moved deftly around her rifle, Danse not particularly focused as he spoke. “It’s common to get them as you move up in rank.”

“I never noticed any on you,” she pointed out.

Danse cleared his throat, his hands pausing. “I never saw the point behind them.”

Penny grinned, sharp and wide at the little blush that had spread on his face. “Celebration, maybe?”

He picked up one of the internal springs and pressed it back into place. “People typically have multiples, as I’ve seen it,” he said, changing the subject. She let him have this one.

“I _wanted_ more, but they always felt like too much of a commitment,” she said, tossing the ball into the air again and catching it. “I never _thought_ I was one for commitment.”

He finally snapped her rifle back together again and sat down on the bed next to her. The bottle sloshed as he picked it up and took a swig, clearly having decided he would join her in melancholic semi-drunkenness.

“I think you’re a very dedicated person,” he said, capping the bottle off and pulling a snack cake from the box he’d left on the ledge.

“It’s funny how you think you see yourself,” she said. She caught the ball and held it, looking out the broad window at the gray sky. “The kind of person who isn’t one for commitment usually doesn’t get married at 24, get a 6-year degree, move to a suburb, and have a kid.”

He opened a cake and put it down by her head as an offering. Her lips pulled up in one corner, and she sat up, holding the ball in one hand and picking at the hard chocolate shell of the Fancy Lad. Idly, she thought about the comfortableness of the scenario, heart feeling heavy from the liquor and little gesture.

“Spending time together this past year, it’s felt like you can’t really know yourself until what you think you know is tested,” Danse said. He put a hand on her knee for a second, the touch warm through her longjohns. “You seem like you aren’t satisfied with what you’ve made of yourself.”

She rolled the ball in her hands for a moment before tossing it again, feeling the old ridges in the stitches. “I’ve been seeing that I kept myself back a lot. My life might’ve gone differently in so many ways if I hadn’t followed who I _thought_ I was.”

“Do you regret restricting yourself like that?” he asked, and she snorted before reaching for the bottle.

 _You’re one to ask about restricting yourself._ “I don’t have time for regret,” she mumbled, picking it up and finishing the last little bit of whiskey in it. “Can we not talk about that?” she asked, capping it and setting it on the ledge.

He nodded and pressed the rest of the cake into his mouth, wiping the crumbs away and swallowing before speaking. “What pre-war commodity do you miss most, then?” he asked, picking up another Fancy Lad and considering if eating it was a good idea.

“Well, I know you’re _utterly_ fascinated by supermarkets,” she said, picking at the cake he’d set down for her, “but I actually just miss _coffee_.”

“I’ve read about coffee.” He unwrapped the new cake and took a bite, smiling a little as he ate it. “High in caffeine and addictive.”

She picked a chunk of chocolate off and chewed it. “With one hell of a crash.” She sighed and ripped another piece free, chewing on it just a little bit more viciously. “I’d kill for a cup, honestly.”

Danse crumpled up the cake wrapper and rifled around in his pack, pulling another glass bottle free. “I’ve sampled it, actually. It was very bitter.”

“Where did you get your hands on _coffee?”_

“When my team originally arrived in the Commonwealth, we discovered a relatively untouched abandoned supermarket.” He put the whiskey bottle down and then rifled around again, coming up with a bag of water bottles. “Haylen figured out how to brew it,” he said, pulling the lid off of one and drinking it.

Penny tensed up at the mention of Haylen, and Danse didn’t fail to notice.

“You’re thinking about something,” he said.

“Have you seen Haylen recently at all?” she asked, fiddling with the edge of her shirt, the fabric still just a little damp.

He swallowed and gently put the can down, thumbing the sharp rim of it for a moment before answering. “When I... was in Listening Post Bravo during the summer, she resided with me for a while.”

The new whiskey bottle sloshed when she picked it up, but she didn’t open it up. A buzz was starting in the back of her head, and she didn’t _want_ to drink her problems away anymore, not when she was still trying so hard to just talk to him. “How was she?”

“She was well, though she had a limp.”

Penny swallowed and rolled the ball in her hands again. “Did she?”

“Yes, but I was surprised to see her at all.” He cleared his throat quietly, his hands smoothing over his longjohns. “I’d assumed she'd fallen with the rest of the Brotherhood.”

She glanced up at him, her head turning a little to look at him sideways and she put the bottle down. “Did you ask her about it?”

He nodded once, the air between them both growing tense and Penny could _feel_ that Danse had been holding onto these questions, just waiting to see if he’d ever be able to ask them.

“What did she say?” Penny asked, mind crackling as she thought of dozens of answers to her own question.

“She said you’d betrayed the Brotherhood,” he said. They were both silent in the wake of the statement, Danse swallowing thickly and clearing his throat before continuing. “She also said you’d injured her and faked her death to protect her.”

“I went and got her after everything had settled down,” Penny said, looking down at the ball in her lap and getting lost in the memory. Then again, nothing had really settled down since then.

“Why?” he asked, looking like he was genuinely perplexed that she’d cared enough to save Haylen.

“She didn’t need to _die_ ,” Penny said sternly, voice hard like it had been so many months before when she’d said the same thing to Deacon.

A thick quiet had fallen and Penny tossed the ball away and grabbed the whiskey bottle he’d pulled out, taking a drink just for something to do with herself. The subject of anything Brotherhood still made her skin crawl, but talking about it made it better. The fact that Danse was talking to her about it and that she was answering him now was progress, that fractured part of themselves slowly having the cracks filled.

He cleared his throat, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen. “We should remove your stitches now,” he said quietly, taking the bottle out of her hands.

The tenseness of the air didn’t really fade out as she pulled her longjohns off and laid back on the bed. The lumpy pillows held her up enough, and Danse made sure she was comfortable before he pushed her shirt up and pulled the bandage off of her completely.

It looked almost completely healed, the skin fresh and sensitive as he touched it gently. It was still a little damp from when she’d washed it earlier and the stitches stuck up out of her, twisted and stiff. For fear of saying something she’d regret, she stayed quiet as he fished for his scissors and a clean rag, anxiously tapping her fingers on the whiskey bottle. The thought to take a drink went through her head, but getting drunk seemed like it would _disappoint_ him then, and she wasn’t sure if she could handle the way he looked at her when she was like that. The sadness in his eyes was wrong, and the pity and achy longing would only make it worse.

He plucked a little at the stitches to loosen them before cutting the edges. Slowly, he dragged them free and put them on an old rag. Penny bit down on her knuckles as he went, squeezing her eyes shut in the face of the little pinpricks of sliding pain. Soon, he’d tugged them all out and was gently cleaning her skin with a whiskey-damp rag.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, careful not to press too hard and hurt her.

“I’m not made of glass,” she huffed. “I feel fine. A little buzzed, maybe.”

He made a low sound in the back of his throat, still wiping away at the scar, though the skin was cleaned completely by now. A few more seconds passed, the only sounds in the room being the gentle drag of the cloth on her skin and the soft pelting of the hail against the big window.

“You shouldn’t have been injured this severely,” he said quietly.

She looked at his face and saw he was staring through her, expression creased in concentration and upset. “It feels like it was unavoidable, Danse.”

He shook his head and a finger traced the scar, the rag getting put on the ledge. “I shouldn’t have allowed us to split up.” The bed creaked as he adjusted himself so he was leaned over her slightly, her legs curling up and resting on his thigh as he got closer to her.

“You can’t be _everywhere_ ,” she said softly. The awkwardness from their earlier conversation bled out a little, though it still felt tense. She reached for his hand and gently held it, pressing it to the new scar. “Besides, I’m alright because you _were_ there.”

The implication of the statement hung in the air, completely unintentional but still heavy. He tensed up and almost took his hand off of her, but she grabbed his wrist and held him there.

She rubbed little soothing circles into his wrist, her other hand rubbing up his forearm. “Stay like this,” she murmured, her skin already missing the feeling of his.

He took a deep breath and nodded, looking down to her hip where she’d placed his hand. His fingers trailed lightly over the middle of her stomach, the touch hesitant. “This is alright?” he asked, unsurety in his eyes when they flicked up to look at her.

She nodded quickly, tired of _wanting_ him so much. “You’re allowed to touch me, Danse.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her closely, pressing his face into the soft part of her skin between her ribs and groaning quietly. Slowly, his lips grazed over the fresh pink scar, her skin achingly sensitive to the point where she couldn’t tell if the feeling of his lips hurt or not. Honestly, she was at a point where it might have been both but there was just such _intimacy_ in it that she didn’t care. It was like every other touch of their bodies made her remember how much she’d _missed_ him and every single thing about him. As he pressed a kiss to one end of the scar, she brushed her fingers over his hair just for the comfort of feeling it.

A soft _Oh my God_ slipped out from between her fingers, her other hand trembling as she ran it through his still-damp hair and grabbed tightly. He groaned at her reaction and a little bit of pain from his hair, his face pressing into the soft skin of her stomach. More reverent kisses followed, warm little spots around this fresh new scar from when he _should’ve been there_. With each one she squeezed her hold on his hair while another gasp slid out of her. It was an intensity that shook in her legs, made the muscles in her stomach jump as his nose dipped into the divot of her bellybutton.

His hands slid around to her back and held her against him as he traced the marked path across her skin like he had the night before. They were warm and coarse as they dug into her, just squeezing more tension into her body. Grappling for a hold against the neediness of his mouth as it moved across her body, her hand left his hair and fisted in the collar of his shirt, roughly tugging on it.

Without any other prompting, he pulled back and yanked the shirt off. It stayed piled up by her head as he tried to go back to running his tongue across every aggression on her skin, but she pulled his face to hers. Seeing how badly he just… _was_ for her set her off, made her so needy for his mouth and his eyes and his hands that she was almost embarrassed by it.

She pulled her shirt up past her breasts and grabbed his hands, a _This is okay_ in the softness of her expression. He looked absolutely frozen in embarrassment, eyes wide and mouth open slightly as his big hands covered the soft skin of her chest and it was just so _endearing_. There was a certain kind of curiosity as he tested the bare weight of her breasts, nervousness shaking in his hands.

“You alright?” she asked softly, her hands covering his own.

He swallowed thickly and nodded, his eyes meeting hers for a moment before he looked away. A thick red blush burned even harder on his face, clearly recognizable as shameful embarrassment. “I’m not accustomed to this,” he said, surprisingly succinct.

She let out a pent-up breath. “We can stop if you need to.”

His mouth opened then closed, eyes flicking from her chest to her face. “I don’t want to make anything uncomfortable between us.”

“What do you want to do, then?” she asked, his hands leaving her chest and twining with hers.

“I want to kiss you,” he said frankly, voice quiet.

The bed creaked as she wiggled around, opening her legs to give him space to settle into. “That’s it?”

“It’s adequate for now,” he said. His hands left hers and he leaned on his elbows, his face a few inches above hers. “I enjoy it.”

There were a few seconds of silence while he looked at her before he turned away, face blushing in embarrassment. Her heart softened again and she reached up to cup his cheek, turning back to look at her. She brushed her lips over his lightly before kissing him, wet and openly. Danse sighed into it, cupping the back of her head for a better angle. He tasted like whiskey and the dark chocolate from the snack cakes, bitter and a little sweet from the grainy sugar, chased with the heat of the alcohol. The slightly rough drag of his chest hair scraped her in the _best_ ways, and she felt herself grow just a smaller shade of desperate for him.

They turned into a slow tangle of limbs, the entire experience cathartic for them both. He held her and kissed her like she was something precious, something he was afraid of breaking. Their bodies fit together well, her hands at home in his hair or holding him as closely to her as she could manage. His body nearly caged her in, covering her completely and eveloping her with the utter _safety_ in the embrace.

Eventually, they’d calmed down and Danse was lying on the bed, his fingers tracing little patterns around the dimples in her back. She pressed a few soft kisses to his chest, hand still idly running up his side. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he said. Her shirt got pushed up even further as his hands moved up her back, feeling the lines of her shoulderblades.

“What were you doing in Diamond City?” she asked, tracing the little white ripples of skin from a bullet in his side.

He swallowed audibly, his hands coming off of her and hovering awkwardly. “I assume you mean in October?”

She nodded once, rubbing her cheek against his chest a little. “Yeah, my birthday.”

“I was… waiting,” he said. For a moment, she thought that was all he was going to say before he cleared his throat and quietly added, “For you.”

She blinked a few times, soaking in the plain ridiculousness of what he’d said. “You waited in _Diamond City_?” she said, tilting her head up and meeting his eyes.

“I took up a stall there because I knew you kept a residence at Home Plate. I assumed you would come through and… know what to do.” He cleared his throat and looked away from her, blushing furiously. “So to speak.”

Penny swallowed thickly and forced her hand to keep tracing his skin, trying to keep the moment from getting awkward. “How long were you there?”

“Approximately three weeks before I saw you.”

“What did you do before then?”

He lifted his head and looked at her, unsurety in his eyes. “You’re really curious?”

She nodded and his head fell back onto the pillow, hands coming to rest on her hips.

“After a month, I still didn’t know what to do.” He took a deep breath and continued to just look at the ceiling, voice rough and scratchy. “I stayed at Listening Post Bravo for that time, waiting for something, and then wandered for a while. I considered leaving the Commonwealth, but I didn’t want to go too far away from you.”

She swallowed down the lump in her throat and bit her lip, fingers sliding up to run over a long scar on his chest. “Why didn’t you come back?” she asked, voice rougher than she wanted it to be.

“I didn’t feel like I could,” he said frankly. It sounded like he’d thought it over to death, come to that conclusion too many times to count.

“I waited for you, you know,” she murmured, feeling so ridiculously raw to just _admitting_ to it like this.

She felt him swallow thickly, his hands tensing. “How long?”

“Almost a month,” she said. The skin on his chest pebbled under her touch, nails scraping him lightly. Oddly, with how completely _stupid_ she felt telling him this, she felt disgusting, heavy gratification for making him know _again_ just what he’d done to her. The ways he’d broken them apart and the ways she’d pieced herself together were still wedged between them and were far more difficult to dig out than others had been.

“Would you have let me return?” he asked, turning to look at her. “After that?”

Her eyes flicked to her hand on his chest, contemplating her answer. In a better state, not half-drunk and pressed against his warm body, she might’ve thought of a better answer, but she couldn’t right then. “I don’t know how I would’ve felt.” _Relieved? Angry, probably. Glad, too. I loved you so_ much _then, I think._ “I’d never turn you away, though.”

He swallowed thickly and let his had fall back, his eyes closing again.

The entire situation felt so _backwards_ , but then again, almost everything he did felt backwards. His actions were stunted and awkward and ran off of instinct more than anything else. The fact that he’d convinced himself that she wouldn’t take him back if he’d slunk into Sanctuary cracked her ribs. It split the inside of her chest, made her ache and hyper aware of those three months she hadn’t known where’d he’d gone. That pain brought up that distance between them again, carved out a gulf even as she lied there practically on top of him and hardly dressed.

“I missed you,” she said softly for want of something _else_ to say. It was so tired and overused but it was how she _felt_. It was the most succinct way to say how it had been, the way that didn’t include her spilling about the nights spent aching for him or worrying for him or hating him. Because, honestly, at the heart of it, she _had_ just missed him.

He shimmied down and she pulled herself up, letting him press his face into her neck. “I’m staying,” he said, voice warm and muffled in her shirt. “I promise.”

With her arms holding him tightly and her face in his hair, her throat closed up and she squeezed her eyes shut against it. He couldn't have known how badly she needed to hear those words in that moment.

She was curled completely around him, her thin shirt the only thing between his face and her chest. The fresh little pinpricks of stubble on his face rubbed her just a little through it, Danse pressing as close as he could. Her arms and legs wrapped around him, hands and face in his hair so she was enveloping him as completely as she could. He was so much bigger than she was, but the way his body relaxed so entirely in the embrace said that he felt utterly safe there. Quickly, he fell asleep like that, softly snoring and face in her breasts while she cuddled closer, waiting to fall asleep as well.

They left the Drive-In early the next morning, Penny waking him up with soft kisses to his neck until he peeled her off so he could calm down. The nights between then and Sanctuary were characterized by a desperate kind of heat that had grown between them. It had been there in the summer, before the Prydwen had burned and he’d left, and it had since faded out into chilling silence and hands that had felt tied. Talking to Danse and actually getting an _answer_ had just made her so much willing to be near him. The proximity didn’t make her chest ache anymore, and there was no resistance when he asked if he could touch her. There was a certainty to the tenderness between them now, this kind of intimacy that left her legs feeling shaky and skin overheated when they curled themselves around each other.

It took nine days to get back home this time. It hailed often, the air cold and dry, and while the nights were blisteringly frigid, Danse seemed wholly devoted to touching her as much as possible. They became a tangle of shaking bodies, Penny’s skin practically on fire under her layers of clothing. It was awkward and fumbling, Danse unsure of what to do but enthusiastic and intent on having his hands just _on_ her. A few nights, they’d managed to awkwardly grind themselves together over their clothes until they finished, Danse embarrassed and Penny just raw from how she _felt_ for him. Often, as she gently carded her fingers through his hair to help him sleep, she felt completely overwhelmed by the what he did to her, how he managed to pull her to pieces even after all they’d been through.

Shaun nearly tackled her as soon as she was within bounds of Sanctuary. Just as she’d cleared the bridge across the river, he flew into her arms and knocked her back into Danse. The energy and enthusiasm in the embrace warmed the entire inside of her chest, the feeling of being missed so completely by someone else feeling like it was almost shining out of her. Her son was kind and smart and maybe it didn’t hurt so much that he looked just like her. He had his father’s smile, after all.

The rest of the day was spent with him, just a few hours of light left before sundown. After, he wanted to see Danse, the two of them having come to a sort of terms together. Penny smiled fondly at the way they seemed to enjoy being around each other, Danse so good with her son that it completely warmed her chest.

On the next day, the usual maintenance started. Penny found Preston and asked that he put out the word that the Drive-In needed settlers and was safe again. The beacon would only do so much and the snow was enough of a deterrent already, but Preston didn’t need any convincing, really. He was genuine and good, always ready to help.

Sturges grabbed her after that and put her to work on the heaters for the settlers. It felt almost like busywork, it was so regular, but it had a clear purpose. Heat, water, and food, the necessities that these people who depended on her needed. She’d give up a few days for the relief that came with helping so many people.

After that third day of repairs and everything was finally finished for then, Sturges waved her into his house. He pulled the full fixed holoplayer off of a shelf in his workshop and handed it to her, saying it should work perfectly. She pursed her lips at him and commented at the timeliness of it, and he just shrugged. He was going to give it to her regardless, he swore, but he guessed her helping just “jogged his memory.” Suspecting otherwise, but not particularly minding the practicality of it, she gathered the speakers and thanked him before she left.

At her house, she made sure Shaun was asleep before hauling the holoplayer into her room and shutting the door. Danse wasn’t back yet from helping Preston, but she was grateful for the solitude for once, sure she didn’t want anyone to see her right now. She plugged the cord into a power strip and prayed nothing caught on fire. When nothing happened besides the ancient piece of tech choking to life, she plugged the speakers in and turned them all the way down, not wanting to wake anyone up.

Chewing on her lip nervously for a second, Penny tapped her fingers on the plastic casing of the holoplayer before pulling out the old, big tin of holotapes Nate had kept. Loose disks and tapes rattled around inside, the ones with bootleg movies covered in little strips of tape that bore their titles. She took those out and laid them of the floor next to her, the hum of the holoplayer warming up itching in her ears.

Out of all 15, she picked _Casablanca_ first because it had always been Nate’s favorite. _Wizard of Oz_ was second, for the kids in the settlement. _Night of the Living Dead_ was last just because it had been her grandmother’s tape and Penelope had always liked horror movies.

She set those aside and carded through the rest of the movies, all of them from before 2000. They were all Nate’s, and his fondness for such old movies had always endeared her, and that fondness had bled into his hobbies. The only reason she had so many tapes and discs of her life with him was because he’s always insisted on recording _everything_. At the time each was made, it had frustrated her that he’d felt the need to constantly be taping, but now she was grateful for the memories.

Some were clearly labeled like _Shaun’s Birth_ or _Penny’s birthday 2072,_ and a few were really just written for himself. _She Said Yes!_ had his fingerprints all over it, and her throat closed up as she fumbled to snap it into the holoplayer.

She hit play and the projector sputtered to life, blowing out hot air as the ancient tech fought to read the preserved disc. On the wall, a recording of her flickered to life, the resolution grainy and choppy, but still clearly the night Nate had proposed to her. The camera was set on a tripod and she watched as he got on one knee and she started screaming, immediately pulling him up and jumping into his arms, enthusiastically repeating _Yes!_

Penny popped the disc out and snapped it back into the case, heart in her throat as she loaded one in that had _Biggest Sunhat Ever_ scrawled on it. It was a video of them at the beach, the resolution clear enough for her to see her face. Sunglasses covered half of her face, and she almost laughed at the ludicrously huge sunhat she had on, fondly remembering the day the tape was from. Watching herself as she frowned at Nate and told him to stop recording her, he said she looked too fantastic not to.

On the floor of her room, she smiled with herself on the wall, touching the scars across her lips and finding she couldn't really remember what it had been like to never have them there. The entirety of the film was like it was someone else, a completely different life that she wasn’t really entitled to watch and miss. She watched Nate burn in the sun and her put her giant sunhat on him to protect his skin, him throwing her into the water, the game of volleyball they’d played with their friends. Sitting there and watching him lift her in the air and kiss her felt too voyeuristic and she ejected the disc, blinking away the frustrating melancholy in her eyes.

 _New Apartment_ was the day they’d moved into the little apartment she’d rented for them in Boston. She was lost behind the boxes, Nate laughing and camera shaking as he climbed around them and helped her organize the cramped little space. The tape cut out with him laughing in the background as he zoomed in on her making a face at him, then started up again with that night. Nate quietly talked while she saw herself passed out on the couch, zooming in on everything they had already put away and what they had yet to organize. Penny pulled the disc out and put it away, taking a few deep breaths as she recalled that day. If her memory was right, he’d shipped out later that week and it would be two months before she saw him in person again.

Penny changed the disc out for _Ioannis’ Wake_ and then ejected it quickly, finding herself unable to see her father in a casket for a second time. She sifted through the box again while the projector steadily heated up the room, passing over _Maria’s Funeral_ for the same reasons that she couldn’t watch her father’s. She picked up _Finally Married!_ and gently touched the plastic casing, but ultimately put it down. It wouldn’t be worth the heartache to watch her and Nate tell each other how in love they were.

Carding through the remaining personal discs, she found one marked _Anniversary: Edit #12_ , the numbers clearly having been erased and rewritten numerous times. With a heavy heart, she gently touched the pencil writing, tracing the little loops in his flowing script. Sighing deeply, she swallowed down the old urge to cry and loaded it into the holoplayer, hesitating for a moment before pressing play.

It was a long montage of clips of her life with Nate, and it was clearly unfinished. Parts were still choppy and the audio hadn’t been edited to be consistent, and some clips had music playing behind the voices whiles others had it cut out completely. They started out with her earliest days with him, 23 years old with smooth skin and a smile that could kill. They gradually grew into candid moments he’d gotten of her as they grew older, a few shots of him oversees and every single visit or homecoming he’d had. Every time, it was her grinning as she ran up and threw her arms around him, and the camera jostling as either he shook it around or the handler did.

She watched the few years she’d had with him, then the final homecoming shot from when she was two weeks from having Shaun. Looking at herself projected on the wall, younger and heavily pregnant, it barely felt real. Tears pricked at her eyes as she watched herself waddle awkwardly towards her husband, just hanging on her waterline. A few shots their house in Sanctuary Hills, the fresh mint of their car, the frown she made whenever she noticed him filming her and the gangly German Shepherd that spent more time harassing their neighbors than he did at home. Shots of Shaun in the infant ward of the hospital, then them bringing him home, the one time they brought him to the beach, and finally the last few moments of their oddly good life together. The little tape that Codsworth had given her was set to a video here, and _watching_ Nate talk set off something base and sad inside of her.

As the movie came to an end, the tears spilled over the edges of her eyes. They left hot trails on her skin, blurring her vision until she could barely see the grainy image of her husband holding their son projected on the wall. Her sides shook and she started crying harder, face turning into something ugly as the entire thing got _wetter_ , forgotten grief and heartache compounding into something that just made her miss who she’d been so much more.

“Penelope?”

She jumped and swiveled around so quickly she almost fell over. Danse was standing in the eaves of her room, looking at her with caring concern creasing his face.

Scrubbing at the tears on her face, she cleared her throat. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she croaked, fumbling to turn the projector off, but her vision was too blurry to find the button. “I thought you were still helping Preston.”

“I completed the task 20 minutes ago,” he said, coming in and crouching next to where she was sitting on the floor. Gently, he reached out to touch her. “Are you alright?”

She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes again, opening them to see Nate smiling with baby Shaun in his arms flickering on the wall. “I’m just upset. Too many memories.”

Danse sat down fully next to her, moving to put an arm around her. She took his hand over her shoulder and held it, leaning into the embrace, unaware of how _badly_ she’d needed to be held then. “Shaun smiles like his father,” he said softly, rubbing little circles into her hand with his thumb.

Tear welled in her eyes again and she fought them, but they still slipped out. It was useless to fight the shaking in her body, her form curling in and letting everything out as Danse pulled her closer again. She sobbed into his shirt, staining the tan cloth darkly as she pressed into him.

It was a horrible way to feel, the inside of her body aching for what she’d _used_ to feel like. She couldn’t remember anymore what it had been like two years ago before everything had fallen apart. She was a completely separate person entirely and watching herself when she was 25 upset her in too many ways to really pin down.

To his credit, Danse just let her cry into him as much as she needed to. After maybe 10 minutes, she took a few deep breathes and rubbed her face into his shirt a bit, sure it was far past the point of getting ruined. “I have a few other tapes you might like to watch,” she said, voice thick and croaky.

“I don’t want to if it’ll upset you,” he said, still gently rubbing her back.

“No, it’s fine,” she said, clearing her throat and pulling away. She wiped at the mess her face had become and took a deep breath. “I think I just needed to cry.”

“If you’re comfortable with it, then yes. I’d enjoy it immensely.” He put his hand on her back and she softly touched his other arm for a moment before pulling the tin closer to herself.

She carded around inside the box for _Penny, Boston Marathon 2074_ and inserted it into the holoplayer. A bird’s-eye view of Main Street in Hopkinton sputtered to life, and Danse watched with wide eyes as he saw a complete piece of what the Commonwealth had looked like before the bombs.

“It was a big marathon held every year in Boston,” she said, standing on her knees to point at the specks the runners made in the projection. Her body cast a shadow on the wall, and she saw the undulating form of the marathoners twisting on her hand.  “I’m right there.”

Danse got up and leaned next to her, seemingly fascinated by the tape. “You were a runner?”

She nodded, smiling gently with affection at the way he was staring at the complete Massachusetts. “I set a personal best that year. Two hours, twenty-seven minutes, fifty-two seconds.”

He turned to look at her, a sheen of admiration in his eyes. “That’s a very impressive time. After seeing you sprint in the field, I’m not surprised.”

“I have something else you might like,” she said, pushing him to look back at the projection. “Lemme look for it.”

She rifled around while he was watching and pulled out _Pumpkin Fest 2077_ just to see what his reaction would be. He seemed… stunned to see her interact with Nate and Shaun, even looking at her oddly when he thought she wouldn’t notice. It could’ve been the sight of her awkwardly holding a baby or seeing her stand on her tiptoes to ask for a kiss from Nate, but she couldn’t be sure. Honestly, watching after sobbing into his shirt, it didn’t hurt so badly to see what her life had been like.

When watching pumpkins float in Frog Lake got old, she found the tape Nate had taken of her celebrating after passing her bar exam. It was dinged up and taken with his first camera and not the better one she’d given him as a present on their second anniversary. The title _A Bar Above the Rest!_ made her laugh a little, eyes sad at seeing his handwriting. She popped it in before she could start crying again so that Danse could see what she’d looked like when she was younger.

It was grainy and choppy, the audio filled with static. Danse looked almost stunned to see her looking so young and put-together. Penny sighed as she watched herself jump around, 24 with her hair pulled back into a ponytail because it’d been long enough for it 200 years ago. She saw Danse look at her again out of the corner of her eye, his hand reaching out and touching her knee.

“You look nostalgic,” he said, his big hand gently covering hers.

She took a deep breath and held it before letting it out. “It’s the memories, you know?” She sighed again, with less force this time. “My life was so much… _cleaner_ back then.” _I was never this much of a mess._

“Do you miss it?” he asked. He’d just been _so_ full of questions lately, she wondered what he was trying to get at.

“I miss making the memories, I guess,” she said, watching as an old friend who’d died a year later in a supply protest jumped with her, both of them sticky with cheap champagne. “Nostalgia can make _anything_ look rosy.”

He moved towards her, a hand resting gently on the small of her back. “Are you alright?” he asked, worry in the warmth of his voice.

“It’s just strange,” she started, her fingers lightly touching the scars on her face again. She was still on the wall, the grainy footage and whirring holoplayer all melding together to beat the surrealness of who she was now into her head. “I’m not… _her_ anymore.”

There was a horrible emotional fragility in the statement, and she felt herself getting choked up again. Silently, she turned the holoplayer off and unplugged it, not looking at Danse.

“I’m gonna go to sleep,” she said, pulling out the tape and holding it tightly.

Danse leaned up on his knees next to her, gently wrapping his arms around her and prying her fingers off of the tape. He freed it and dropped it into the tin, pulling her close so she could grab onto him while he closed the tin.

“Can you hold me tonight?” she asked. With her arms wrapped as hard around his broad chest as she could manage and her face in his shirt, she felt so _small_. Safe and wanted, too, but it was an awful nervousness in her guts to know she wasn’t the girl from 200 years before.

“Of course,” he murmured, holding her tightly. His hand smoothed her hair down and he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, so much adoration in the act her throat closed up again. It felt like an _always_.

The next morning she woke up with her back against Danse’s chest and his face in her hair. He was snoring softly and barely moved when she wiggled around to look at him. Scrunched up in sleep and snoring softly, she couldn’t help the tenderness in her chest for him. His mouth was open a little and his stubble was long enough to almost be a beard and his arms were still loosely around her even in sleep.

That day was a good one too, spent with the little bits and pieces of family she’d managed to cobble together. Spending her days fixing things or patrolling the edges of the town felt nice. Everyone even seemed excited when she spread word about a movie night, many people eager to see a film in the first place. It was something she took for granted, but so many of these people probably had only ever even seen a handful of _books_ in their lifetime, let alone a complete pre-war movie.

A few days later, about an hour after dark, she held the screening in the house she kept for caravan traders who were just passing through. Deacon quickly grabbed her as people were shuffling into the bungalow for the movie. He quickly asked her if she could head back to the HQ with him in the morning. Dez had something she wanted Penny to handle personally, and he only told her that they were relocating a synth girl after Penny pressed him for more information. Knowing the purpose behind getting dragged back, she agreed. Mixed feelings about returning to work for the Railroad boiled in her head, but she shoved them out of her mind in favor of enjoying a few hours of peace and old movies.

She set the holoplayer up and connected it, snapping the first movie in and sitting down while it started. Her son settled into the dip between her crossed legs, hunched forward intently to watch the movie. Danse sat to her left, an arm behind her so she could lean against him.

Shaun was mesmerized by the movies, eyes wide and engaged the entire time. Danse mirrored him, face oddly lax in attention as _The Wizard of Oz_ played. It was sweet the way they watched the movie so intently, bodies curved towards the projection just like everyone else in the room. Penny listened to the grainy speakers as she held onto her son, content to just sit there with the two of them.

 _The Wizard of Oz_ ended and Penny loaded in _Casablanca_ , sighing as she watched the movie again. So many old memories of humoring Nate and watching it with him came back to her. He’d loved it, and for as much as seeing the movie made her heart ache with losing him, she was grateful the tape had survived and she had another thing to remember him by.

 _Night of the Living Dead_ was loaded in after _Casablanca_ was over and all of the children had been shuffled off to bed. Penny tried to get Shaun to go, but he whined and wanted to stay, citing that 11 years old _had_ to be old enough to stay up until 12. Feeling like bedtimes were on the arbitrary side now and that the fear of horror movies was something someone could really only get through experience, she let him stay.

Halfway through, though, Shaun pulled an affected yawn and got up, saying he really should get to bed. Penny raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t prod him further, sure he was scared by the movie but too proud to admit it. Still, she made him bend down so she could kiss him goodnight.

After Shaun left, she pulled Danse closer so he could lean back on her. Idly, he twined their fingers together and adjusted himself so she was holding him while he continued to watch. The movie finished, only a few people still left in the room, and Penny wrapped the holoplayer up and carried it back to her house. Danse in tow and helping her over the bigger mounds of snow she couldn’t clear alone.

She stored it in her living room and checked on Shaun to make sure he was asleep before she went to her own room. Danse was sitting on the bed, shirt already off and in the middle of removing his shoes.

“How’d you like the movies?” she asked, sitting down to him and toeing her boots off.

“They were very interesting,” he said, neatly lining their shoes up at the foot of the bed. “I’ve never had the privilege of seeing a motion picture.”

He settled back down and Penny twined her arm with his, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I know. You mentioned it when we cleared the Drive-In for the first time.”

“You remembered that?” he asked. They maneuvered themselves so they were lying down, Penny stripping to just her shirt and underwear before curling into his side.

“It was one of the first times I realized how different I’ve grown up from everyone else out here,” she said, wiggling closer as Danse shimmied an arm under her to hold her. “I figured I’d do something for Sanctuary.”

“Now fewer pre-war artifacts will be lost to time,” he said, agreeing with her. “For another generation, at least.”

She hummed softly and dragged her fingers up a long scar on his stomach, feeling the puckered skin. “How did you like them?” she asked.

“I enjoyed them,” he said, rubbing his thumb over her hip. “They were interesting to see what mainstream culture before the war was like.”

She pressed a few kisses to his neck, brushing the point of her nose over the skin there. “What’d you like about them?” she murmured, closing her eyes and enjoying the warmth of his body.

“I found them good in different manners,” he said, yawning slightly. “The ghouls in the final movie were misrepresented, though.”

“They’re not based on _actual_ ghouls, Danse,” she said, opening her eyes and almost rolling them at him. “It was just a horror movie, and not even a very scary one.” _By my standards, at least._

“The family should’ve been more equipped for an event such as the one presented,” he pressed and she half suspected he was poking the point just to play with her a little.

Penny huffed and laid her hand over his chest. Feeling the very slight rumble of a chuckle in his sternum, right under his heartbeat, her suspicion was confirmed. After a few seconds of quiet, Danse brushing his lips over the crown of her head, Penny cleared her throat.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked softly, her fingers idly running over his chest.

He made a soft humming sound that she could, clearly tired from the day and warmth of them both together.

“Deacon asked me to help him with something for the Railroad today,” she said quietly, tracing little patterns on his skin as he held her, and she felt him tense up a little. “I was wondering if you wanted to… come with me, or if I should just go alone.”

“You want me to come with you?” he asked, voice raspy. He felt stiff and tight next to her, the arm that was holding her tense. Worry that she was asking too much of him bubbled in her chest, heavy and stifling.

“I won’t make you,” she said quickly, pushing herself up so she could look at him. She braced her hands on his chest and pushed his hair back, touch gentle. “I understand if it makes you uncomfortable.”

He took a deep breath, eyes flicking around her face while his hands smoothed up her sides under the baggy shirt. “What is your assignment?” he asked, fingers pausing at her newest knife scar and lightly tracing over the shiny skin there.

“Relocation,” she said after clearing her throat, skin prickling at the gentle grazing of his rough fingers.

“Of a synth?” His fingers stopped moving and he looked at her directly, a curious look in his eyes.

She raised an eyebrow at his need for clarification, looking at him sideways. “I’d assume so.”

“I’ll accompany you, then,” he said, surprising her with his surety.

She moved her hand over on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her palm. “You’re sure?”

“I don’t want you to be alone.” His hands held onto her hips and he rolled them both onto their sides. The blankets tangled around them a bit, his lips pressing a few loud kisses against her neck as he cuddled himself against her, voice and body growing tired. “It’s too risky.”

They way he’d agreed with remarkable surety kept her awake even after he’d fallen asleep. He snored softly into her hair and she held him, his skin warm and marked and the look in his eyes had her thinking about those reasons he never talked about. Times like this, as she lied there pressed into his side, it was hard to know he was a synth. With her son and Curie, it was just a given, another fact about them. They’d _started_ _out_ that way, so there was no other classification for them in her head. Danse had always been so intensely human, in his rationale and feelings, that for him to be anything _other than_ had never been a possibility to her.

There were things about his past that she suspected were completely real, had the scars to back up the memories, that made her think he’d never been funneled through the Railroad. Hell, he probably hadn’t even had a _purpose_ in the Institute past being a mark of panic for the Brotherhood. Maybe he wondered at his past too, and thought that seeing someone else to their new life would trigger memories of an agent doing the same for him. Falling asleep like that was strange, and her dreams were hazy things that felt too anxious to be enjoyable.

She was woken up in the early morning that night by her bladder and checked her Pip-Boy. The soft pink light burned her eyes, and she was seeing green for a few moments before she managed to blink it away. Quickly, she ran for her bathroom and went, trying to keep her bare feet off of the freezing floor. Finished, she nearly hopped back to her room but stopped when she heard something in Shaun’s room.

“What are you still doing awake?” she asked, standing in the door to his room. He was standing by his workbench, fiddling with his lamp. “Are you alright?”

He fidgeted around, looking at the pile of tools and scraps of metal on his little workbench. “I’m fine, I just… wasn’t tired.” The lamp _clinked_ softly as he put it back on his nightstand.

“It’s 3am,” she said. “You _have_ to sleep.”

He looked nervously from the lit lamp on his bench back to his bed. Sighing a little, he turned it off and climbed back in, pulling the blanket into his lap as he sat down. She almost left before he spoke up. “Why are _you_ awake?”

Penny looked at Shaun thumbing the end of his blanket and smiled softly, the situation clicking into place. “I was wondering if I could sleep in here tonight, actually,” she said, half-turning back into his room.

He looked at her, eyes wide in the dark. “You always sleep in _your_ room.”

“Well, I figure that it’s just been such a long time since I’ve seen all of those movies,” she said, crossing her arms and doing her best to hide that little smile. “I’d forgotten just how scary they were.”

She could just barely remember the pridefulness of being eleven and being afraid of the dark. There was a certain kind of primal fear of being alone in inky darkness and a distinct want to be bigger than the things that could hurt you in it. Almost being a teenager, she’d been too prideful to say she didn’t want to be alone in her big room at night, and her parents had never really understood that she didn’t want to have to _ask_ them to be around, they should’ve just understood that.

Shaun smiled quickly for a second before looking away and fiddling with the edge of his blanket, pulling an affected sigh. “I mean… if _you’re_ scared, you can sleep with me I guess.” His eyes darted to her and then back. “If you want.”

Faintly, she heard Danse snore, the sound loud. _He must’ve rolled onto his back_ , she thought, stepping completely into Shaun’s room and quietly shutting the door. “Scoot over for me, Shaun.”

He moved to the edge of the bed and let her climb in next to him, yelling a little when he felt her cold toes on his legs. She grinned at him, pulling him into a tight hug and pressing a few kisses to his face, overwhelmed by affection for her kind son. He struggled a little but still smiled, rolling over and saying goodnight to her before falling back asleep quickly.

The next morning, she woke up curled next to Shaun on his little bed and stretched quietly in the tight warmth of his room. Her son huffed a little in his sleep and adjusted as she moved, not waking up, and she fondly ruffled his hair, seeing the little red highlights it had in the early pink light. Shuffling a little so she could sit up, she saw Danse asleep in the beat up kiddie armchair Shaun kept.

Lips pulling into a half-smile, she got up and carefully tiptoed to him, feet freezing in the cold room. She folded herself into his lap, lightly kissing the corner of his mouth and gently shaking him until he woke up. His eyes opened slowly and then he came awake with a start, looking around before seeming to realize she was there. The slight frantic look in his eyes left and softened before they closed again, his hands grabbing hers so he could press a kiss to her knuckles.

They left the room after Penny woke up Shaun to say goodbye to him, ruffling his hair and kissing his cheek before she went back to her room and dressed. They packed carefully, Danse gently grabbing her and pulling her close when they were finished. He held her tightly for a moment before he kissed the bridge of her nose and leaned his forehead against hers, Penny relishing in the free affection, but worried about what caused it. The odd look in his eyes the night before came to her mind, and she chewed on her lip as they finished getting ready and left the house to go and collect Deacon before heading to the Railroad HQ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jesus christ it's 14k long. no wonder it took a month to write.
> 
> anyway yeah, i started working again and I've been really tired so i havent had much time to write but! i really wanted to put this out so i stayed up late tonight to get it done. tell me how you liked it!


	8. Railroading

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s always _felt_ like my responsibility,” she said. “He was my _son_. I couldn’t break out and stop them from taking Shaun, and I’ve been told I shouldn’t blame myself and that it _wasn’t_ my fault so many times, but that doesn’t make it any better.”
> 
> “What I am _isn’t your fault,_ Pen.” She felt him sigh like he was about to roll over to face her, but he stayed put.
> 
> “I _know_ ,” she said simply, brushing her fingers through the fine hairs at the back of his neck. “But it isn’t yours either, Danse.”

 A few days after returning to Listening Post Bravo with all of Danse’s possessions stuffed into a crate, she’d managed to coax him into leaving the bunker with her. It had taken nearly two weeks of cabin fever before he agreed to leave the place with her. At first she’d thought it was fear that he’d be hunted and murdered the second he left, but when she'd asked him, he’d said he was afraid of what could happen to her with him around, citing his artificial humanity as too big of a target to risk putting on her.

The day they stepped out had been bright and yellow, though thick rain was falling from a mostly-blue sky splattered with a few feathery clouds. Emerging from the bunker, Penny had turned back to look at the building and marks of what had happened outside of it. It pulled out memories she had just been beginning to think she’d rather forget.

Listening Post Bravo had been hard to find, the flat building blending in easily with the uneven terrain. Penny could barely see it over the lip of a hill, the encroaching trees shading the station with their new budding leaves. Above it, the slivers of sky that could be seen were dark and gray, a few fat drops of rain starting as the defenses noticed her approach. The heavy sky was to be expected with mid-April.

The inside was defensible, she noticed, imagining in her head the way Danse would’ve commented on it. _An area safe from an aerial attack with a reinforced interior for long-term occupation._ Clinking down the rickety elevator, she wondered just how long he could’ve lasted here before someone else with a greater respect for Brotherhood doctrine had found him. At the bottom, seeing him through the little window across the room, she got the feeling that he’d only intended to _just last_ before that exact person came for him.

That wasn’t her, though, and if Maxson ever found out just exactly who she was to the Institute, it would only be a matter of time before that _exact person_ came for her too.

“What are you doing?” she’d asked roughly, tugging her bandanna off of her mouth. She’d come to the opening the control room he was in, noting the disheveled way he looked. Sleep had clearly been in short supply, and the yao guai had clearly made it difficult for Danse to win judging by the scabs that were threatening to bleed through the torn arm of his flightsuit.

He jumped and ripped the headset off, turning to look at her with wide eyes. “Knight Howard!” The headset clattered to the ground and he blinked a few times before easing and looking somewhere to the left of her. “It figures you were the one sent after me.”

Her eyes flicked from the small handgun on the lip of the tape deck to the still-running recorder in his hand. “I asked what you were _doing_ , Danse.”

He’d never answered her question, but the way he actually _begged_ her to kill him felt disgusting to hear. Coupled with seeing the stern resignation in his face, it was so clear he’d been preparing to kill himself. A life time ago, she’d very nearly been there herself enough to know what it looked like on another person. It was the straightness of his back, the slight relief behind the iron acceptance that this was all going to be over soon. It was the look of a person who just couldn’t see any other way out.

Later, after Arthur had left, Danse had just stood in the storming night like he didn’t know what to do with himself. The rain pelted down on the both of them, lightening flashing and throwing harsh white into the somber scene they both made. She had been unwilling to leave him just standing there, but a chill had been growing in her bones and  the shivering was getting unbearable. Hesitantly, she’d reached out to him and tugged him back inside. He might’ve not cared if he froze to death, but she’d be damned if she’d worked this hard to keep him alive and he gave into hypothermia.

Inside, just barely out of the rain, she’d managed to balance herself on a half-busted crate and kissed him. It was the third one she’d given him, and he’d looked surprised like he hadn’t been expecting her to still _want_ to kiss him. The sheen of his eyes made it feel like she meant too much to him, like she was worth more than he deserved. She’d kissed him again, just to get rid of the look on his face and the feeling in her stomach, driving away the feeling that things had changed because she was tired of being thrown off. Pressing her lips to his face felt base and human, and tossing herself into convincing him of his humanity filled the gap inside of her left by the loss of Shaun. It was fine if she was so much to someone else.

 _Now_ , though? Countless summer nights she’d lied awake, positive he’d left because he couldn’t handle what she’d done because the perfect Penelope in his eyes wasn’t nearly as human as Penny knew she was.

Deacon lived near the entrance to the bridge, his little shack one of the less-maintained structures. He was hardly there, from what she understood, instead enjoying slipping into the bunkhouse and listening to what the caravaners and other residents were talking about. He’d always said it was to collect intel, but at this point, she believed it was completely because Deacon was the nicest person alive.

Penny paused, hand a second away from knocking on the door before she turned to look at Danse. “You’re sure about this?” she asked, shielding her eyes against the sun as she looked up at him. His helmet was on. “You really don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to.”

He looked back at her house, still just visible at the bend of the street, then back to her. “I said I would accompany you. Why do you keep doubting that?”

 _Well gee, Danse, lots of fucking reasons._ “I just don't want you to make a mistake.”

He disengaged his helmet and pulled it off, expression serious and concerned. “Remaining by your side isn’t a mistake”

“You sound very sure about that.”

“It’s one of the few things I’m positive about.”

She had to look away from Danse, a little overcome by the surety in the statement. Clearing her throat, she knocked on the door to the shack, blushing the longer she left Danse looking at the back of her head. In an effort to get Deacon to move faster, she hit the door again, calling his name.

Danse shuffled a little behind her. “Are you sure he’s at home?”

“No,” she muttered, rapping her knuckles on the door again. “He might be pretending to be a planter in the greenhouse for all I know.”

She banged on the door for almost a minute straight after that, frustrated enough to just not go with him if he ever turned up. It shouldn’t be this difficult to get a hold of him to do something for _his_ faction. About to turn around and just leave, she spotted Deacon walking around by the retaining wall along the river.

Frowning, Penny cupped her hands around her mouth. “Going somewhere?” she called, enjoying it a little bit when Deacon jumped.

“I was waiting for you,” he said as he walked over. His pack was already on his back and he actually did look ready to go. Looking at where Danse stood behind Penny, he raised an eyebrow. “You’re comin’ with?”

Danse frowned before latching his helmet back on. “I’m accompanying Penelope.”

Both eyebrows went up, and he faced Penny. “Right. Well, can I get a second to talk to you?”

She shrugged and let him lead her, patting Danse gently on the arm of his power before following Deacon around the corner of his house, standing by the big rocks around the bridge. Walking with him, she kept her hands jammed in her pockets, turning her back so she couldn't see the way she knew Danse was looking at her. “Something _else_ up?”

“You sure you wanna bring Danse?” Deacon asked quietly.

Penny shrugged. “It’s his decision, and he said he wanted to come.”

“Yeah, but _why?”_ Deacon asked, eyebrows raising. “I’m not gonna pretend to understand what you’ve got going on, but, like, I’m not too keen on the HQ getting shot up for a _third_ time, Penny.”

“He’s _not_ going to hurt anyone,” she said sternly. In all honesty, she’d wondered if revenge was what Danse had in mind, but what they had now felt too sincere to just be the long con for a suicidal shoot-out. “He gets nervous when we’re not together, I think.” _Again, in all honesty, I do too._

He sighed and rolled his shoulders, his pack jingling. “Look, I’m all for second chances, but it’d be great if we didn’t have to play one where my life is at risk.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” she snapped. “Is this the only reason you asked me over here? Because this has to be the most suspicious thing you’ve ever asked me to do, and you’ve had me do some pretty questionable shit.”

Deacon leaned back and adjusted his knit hat, pulling it over the sparkly little shoots of light red hair over his ears. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve done _much_ shadier things with you.”

“The _point_ , Deacon.”

“The girl you’re relocating for us asked for you specifically,” he said, cutting to the chase. “She asked for the one that looked like Father, and Dez is kinda more inclined to give in than let her walk around and tell everyone.”

Penny cleared her throat, silently thinking for a moment. Frigid fear started in her spine, and she swallowed, looking back at Danse out of the corner of her eye. “Does Desdemona know?” she asked, turning back to Deacon

“I think she suspects.”

“And everyone else?”

There was something that looked like sympathy in Deacon’s face, but he had those ridiculous sunglasses on and she had a hard time reading him. “No one knows he was your son.”

“Good,” she said as she cleared her throat, looking away. “That’s good.”

The silence that fell was awkward, and Deacon shuffled in place for a moment before saying that they should probably get going. It felt serious and heavy, and Penny almost hated him for a second for bringing up Shaun, but it wasn’t his fault what had happened. In truth, as much as she elected to not think about it, often she very nearly hated herself for what had happened.

They left promptly after that, all three of them markedly silent. Deacon and Danse hardly ever shut up, but now it was like they had nothing to say.  Before, Penny had often found herself wishing she had some peace and quiet, but now it felt strained and awkward, and she was willing to give anything for someone to just _say something._

So when they made camp that night and Danse corralled her off from where Deacon had decided to pass out to sleep, she knew all those pent-up words were coming.

“Something up?” she asked, knowing full well something was wrong.

“Why you?” Danse asked immediately, arms crossed tightly. “Why _now?”_

“Deacon told me this girl requested me specifically.” Penny huffed and looked away at the lump Deacon made in his bedroll, the old shack creaking under the weight of the snow on the roof.

She heard Danse sigh, saw the mist of his breath in the pink light from her Pip-Boy. “How can you be sure he isn’t lying?”

She looked back at him, a corner of her mouth quirking to the side. “I can’t.” _He is a liar, afterall._

“So this _could_ be a trap, then.”

“They’d have nothing to gain by tricking me, Danse.” She scratched at the back of her hand, trying to ignore the irritation and way her body was begging for a smoke, _any_ kind of release. Frustration tingled in her limbs and felt like she was ready to fight with him again, but like she kept telling herself, she was tired of fighting with him.

Still though, he pressed her. “Why do you even want to do this?”

“It’s my _job,”_ she grumbled, sitting down on a crate. “I’ve been ignoring them for months and I always have work to do.”

Danse sat down next to her, the crate creaking under his weight enough for her to be afraid it would crumble. "They appear to be operating well without you."

She sighed, closing her eyes and rubbing her face in tired frustration, both at him and herself. “I _wanna_ help synths, Danse.”

“It isn’t your _responsibility,”_ he said like couldn’t believe why she’d blame herself for any of this.

“But it _feels_ like I’m responsible _,”_ she snapped before standing up and blowing the lantern out. Turning, she saw him still sitting on the crate looking just a little stunned. “I’m just gonna… go to sleep, then. If that’s all.”

She didn’t look back to see if he got up and followed her inside, but after a few minutes of lying in her sleeping bag, she felt the ground shake as he came back in. It was so immensely _difficult_ to not look up at him, but she kept her eyes squeezed shut. There were a few seconds of silence as he stood there, then he sighed, and his sleeping bag rustled as he zipped himself into it.

Every night after that was characterized by a growing tension between them both, Penny absolutely certain it was completely because of her. As they padded around a fire or spread out their bedrolls in a broken-down shack, she’d tell him it was okay if he wanted to go back, she wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to come.

He’d tell her he was staying, and it felt like a mantra. It became distant and he went to sleep quickly and without her more often than not, clearly not eager to sit up with her and Deacon. Half of her just wished he’d turn around and wait for her because she didn’t want to see what he was really capable of. The other half was sickeningly terrified of exactly that, the horrible parts of her head absolutely _positive_ that he wouldn’t wait and just go on with his life.

There was nothing rational about those bits of her, but they were so much louder than reason. It was the ridiculous fears that could get to you the most, the ones that only have to be proven true once to grow too strong to be beaten. So often in her life, things had a way of shaking out that made her hate herself for not being more cautious.

By the time they were a day away from the HQ, it just felt like she was pushing him away on purpose. Hell, maybe she really did want him to turn around so she wouldn’t have to find out why he’d agreed to come so readily. Avoiding the bad parts of them had been the easiest thing to do, but it always blew up in her face. Pushing him away and forcing him to make a choice might’ve been her own way of seeing if he really intended to go through with being there. Would he really put up with everything she did, or would there always be a breaking point?

The last night before they reached the Old North Church went by quickly and usually. Danse was awake before Penny and Deacon climbed into their sleeping bags, and he was awake when she woke up, sitting up and organizing his pack. They didn’t speak much and packed up, walking until the decrepit church came into view amidst the derelict buildings and blood soaked snow.

About to go in, Penny called for Deacon to go ahead of her. He hesitated, face completely covered by scarves and his sunglasses, but she could feel the indecision in the act. Had they been less to each other, he might’ve suspected she would run or was coming up with a plan that he wouldn’t like. As they stood now, though, she had nothing to gain by hurting a friend.

She turned to Danse, mouth open and about to speak, but he beat her to it.

“The Old North Church is an icon in American Revolutionary War history,” he stated, peering up at the steeple. He’d taken his helmet off to get a better look at the building.

Penny shut her mouth and blinked, surprised he’d said anything, much less _that_. “Preston said that when I brought him here, too, once,” she said, looking up with him. A few clouds covered the stars in the dark sky, their gray color bright against the bruised blue. “Is history your favorite topic to read about?” she asked, realizing she’d never taken the time to before.

“Essentially,” he said, nodding. Still looking up, he scanned the immediate area and derelict buildings. “The Brotherhood is concerned with preserving knowledge and technology, and history falls into those designations.”

She hummed quietly, liking the lack of nervous fear between them for the moment. Wanting to keep it like this just a bit longer, she avoided saying what she’d originally sent Deacon away for.

“What year did the UN disband?” she asked instead, mouth curling at the corners.

“January 26th, 2052,” he answered easily. He didn’t even take a second to think about it, confident that he was correct.

“Jesus, Danse,” she said. “I only asked for the year.”

“I provided additional information because I knew it.” He looked away from the steeple of the church, peering at her out of the corner of his eye. “Are you testing me?”

Penny’s smile cracked wider, and she burrowed her hands deeper into her pockets as the wind swirled loose snow around them. “I just know you love prewar history. I think that’s why you like me so much.”

He looked down at her completely, seemingly affronted that she would even suggest it. “I have numerous reasons for liking you.”

“I know, I’m just _kidding_ Danse.”

“Did you send Deacon ahead just so you could quiz me, then?”

“Not really. I just stopped you because I wanted to talk a little before we went in,” she said, looking to the side as she messed with her scarf.

He sighed and glanced back up at the steeple for a second before turning back to her. “I’ll admit, I shouldn’t have confronted you like I did.”

Her lips turned up at the corners slightly. “I’m sorry I keep asking if you really want to come with me.” She kneaded the collar of her coat a little, nervous about apologizing after so long without actually talking to him. “This entire situation just has me on edge.”

“You didn’t have to come,” he said softly, tone gentle. She suspected he really did believe she didn’t have to do this.

“I did,” she said simply because everything that had happened had been because of her. It didn’t seem like he was ever going to understand that. “That’s not my point, though.”

His eyebrows creased as he made a face at her, like he was afraid of what she going to say next. “What did you want to say, then?”

“I want you to know that it _does_ mean a lot to me that you came,” she said, throat tight from the sincerity. “Things have been tense lately, but you being here makes me feel stronger.”

He looked at her softly, eyes upset like he was thinking about something he wasn’t going to tell her. It was a sad look on his face, and she felt her heart thump at seeing it. Sighing, he glanced back at where Deacon could be seen waiting by the door, about 20 feet off.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, gut tangling in worried knots at his silence.

He looked back at her and sighed again, brows drawing together. “I want to kiss you, and I was contemplating if you’d let me.”

She broke out in a relieved smile, a little nervous laugh slipping out. “You don’t need to _ask,”_ she said, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “But I’d love to kiss you, Danse.”

The ground shook a little as he took a knee, bending down so she could reach up to him. She almost slipped in the ice and snow, but he held her steady with a big metal hand while she pulled her gloves off so she could cup his face. The beard on his cheeks grated against her palms a little, but she found she liked it. It’d been so long since she’d had her hands on him.

It was the first time he’d kissed her in almost two weeks, the solid feeling of his head in her hands extremely grounding. His lips were warm and chapped, and she wanted to just stay caught like that for hours, stuck in the feeling of being so emotionally bare to him that she felt safe enough to trust him. It was a good way to feel.

“Promise you’re going to be alright in there,” she murmured when she broke off. Their foreheads were leaned together and she could feel the flutter of his eyelashes on her cheek as his eyes opened.

“I promise,” he said softly, pressing a few more kisses to her face before the bridge of her nose.

“Good.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes again, brushing her nose over his. “Kiss me again, then we’ll go.”

She felt his lips pull into a little smile, Danse taking a second to rub his nose over hers again before he gave into her request. The second one was quick but sweet, a lot of longing pressed into it. There were always going to be those heartsick parts of them, she guessed. The ones born from that time apart and the emotional turmoil that wracked them both. At this point, it didn’t feel like bad parts of their relationship as much as they just _were_ parts. Not everything would be rosy or awful, most things about them were just going to be there. Who they were in the moment was what mattered, was built off of the fractured parts of who they’d been.

They started back for the entrance to the church, Penny flushed from the kisses. Her fingertips tingled a little, like she was still able to feel his stubble and how warm his skin was compared to the frigid air. Danse’s presence gave her more confidence, made her not embarrassed when Deacon began jabbing at her.

“ _Finally,”_ Deacon said as they started inside, dragging the word out dramatically. “I was about to find a crowbar to pry you two apart with.”

Penny huffed, noting the chilling silence from Danse. “Deacon, I swear, I’m not afraid to smack you.”

He made an affronted noise, mock-gasping in surprise. “You’d hurt a pretty face like this?”

“In a _heartbeat.”_

He lamented her cruelness as they descended into the guts of the building. Penny played along with him, not really mad at him, hardly ever really mad at him. He deflected and affected, but there was something comforting in being friends with someone who could lighten any mood like Deacon could. The roots of his personality were gnarled and ugly, but the same could be said for herself. So she left it alone.

Inside, the catacombs were disgusting. Nothing was alive anymore, but that left the unpleasant fact that _everything_ was dead. It left the entire place smelling like decay and mold, the awful stench of the Commonwealth something Penny sure she was never going to get used to.

“You’re lucky you have a helmet,” Penny said quietly, gingerly stepping around a few feral corpses that hadn’t finished decomposing entirely before winter had set in. “It smells like shit in here.”

He helped lift her over a half-frozen puddle, not offering Deacon a hand and just watching him step through. “I’m aware of the stench.”

They walked through the catacombs, Penelope’s stomach turning itself into knots at the memories the entire place brought up. The further in they got, the less she wanted to be there. By the time she reached the puzzle door, her feet were itching to just turn around and leave, the sight of the months-old bloodstains giving her a headache.

But she felt safer with Danse beside her, and she was constantly telling herself that if he’d come this far with her, then surely he’d always come just a little further. His presence _did_ make her feel stronger, even with the uncomfortable air between her, him, and Deacon. It made her hand steadier as she turned the wheel to corresponding letters. The dial clicked and the wall swung open, Danse huffing as he ducked under the overhang to follow her into the mouth of the HQ.

Inside, two men were guarding the entrance and armed absolutely to the _teeth_.

“Who are you?” one shouted while the other silently leveled his shotgun at Danse.

Penny rolled her eyes and put a hand on the chest of Danse’s armor while Deacon grinned to her right. “Who are _you?”_ she asked, not recognizing the faces.

“New recruits,” Deacon said in an aside to her. Then he took a step towards them and raised his hands in the air. “I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee! Dez really has outdone herself this time.”

They were silent for a few seconds before they turned to look at each other, one shrugging before turning back and keeping his gun on them while the other looked at Penny. “Desdemona said to be expecting an operative back.”

“You’re getting two for the price of one, then,” she said, crossing her arms. “You know why we’re here, then, don’t you?”

There was an awkward moment of silence before the one that had spoken sighed and turned back towards the entrance to the HQ.

“It’s Bullseye!” he called over his shoulder, the other guard still staring Danse down. He waved them in, looking resigned, but the way the second guard glared at Danse like he wanted nothing more than to kill him unnerved Penny.

Deacon walked in past them, but the two guards closed the gap when Penny tried to get through. Deacon turned immediately and was watching her in surprise from the gap between their heads.

“You wanna frisk me or something?” she asked tiredly.

“Who’s the suit?” one asked, gesturing to Danse with the muzzle of his gun.

She crossed her arms over her chest and sidestepped in front of the gun, letting it bump against her coat. “Part of my team.”

“Last time power armor was down here a third of us died,” the other said. He jerked his chin at Danse. “Take the helmet off.”

There was a loud moment where Penny was desperately afraid Danse would make a scene, but the seals on his helmet hissed and he pulled it off. There were sweat marks and grime on his scowling face, but he didn’t say anything. _If looks could kill_ was such an overused thing to say, but Penny was sure the two guards would be nothing but dust if it was true. She turned back to them.

“Not that pretty, but there he is.” She stared at the one that was glaring at Danse suspiciously, forcing herself into his line of sight. “Now let me through.”

His eyes flicked to look at her, then back to Danse. “Fine, but _he_ stays here.”

Honestly, she was a little relieved he’d said that. Her guts had felt twisted and nervous about bringing Danse into the HQ, and this gave her an out.

“Deal,” she said, ignoring Danse’s huff of annoyance.

She turned to Danse and put her hand on his arm, wishing he was out of the armor so she could really touch him. “You’ll be fine out here?”

His face was turned down towards her, but he was looking over her head, almost certainly glaring at the guards. Eyes shifting down to her, his expression softened a little but was still visibly upset. “I can handle myself, but I don’t like you going somewhere I’m not allowed.”

“I’ll be back, don’t worry,” she murmured, lightly tapping her fingers on the forearm of his armor. “Probably an hour. Not that long.”

“Be as quick as possible.” He rolled his shoulders and looked like he was itching to reach for his rifle as he looked at the guard out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t like it here.”

She smiled a little, the look feeling sad on her face. “I’m not a fan either, but you do what you gotta.”

Penny pulled herself up on the front of his power armor, careful not to cut herself on the lip of it. She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before hopping down and following Deacon past the mouth of the HQ. Not looking back was hard, but she could picture in her head how they’d all be staring at each other in tense silence until she got back.

As she walked into the main room, Desdemona was waiting front and center. Her face was serious and she had a cigarette in hand, already half done with it. The way she looked at Penny, it was like it was the week after the Institute had been blown up, and not nearly eight months later.

“You like to keep a girl waiting,” Dez said, taking a long drag from her cigarette.

“It makes it better that way,” Penelope answered, stuffing her hands into her coat pockets. She was starting to sweat around her collar and wrists, bones aching for a smoke at the smell of the air.

“Deacon was supposed to have you here a month ago.” She turned and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Care to explain?”

Deacon held his hands up, open and palm-up, and shrugged. “I can’t control her.”

Dez’s mouth quirked up on one side and she laughed once through her nose. “We should just be glad she’s on our side, then.”

There was a sour taste in Penny’s mouth at her words. With Danse just a few yards away, her stomach started churning. Talking about _sides_ , there was a gross kind of sickness in her that made her wish she just hadn’t chosen anything. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be a part of the Commonwealth’s future and she’d nosed her way in, everything since then just one big punishment for managing to climb out of the ground.

“I _did_ choose you,” she said. Bitterness about that illusion of _choice_ she’d forced herself into months ago hung behind her words, but she wasn’t sure if she'd heard it.

Dez tapped her cigarette off and took another drag, gesturing for Deacon to beat it.

Catching her drift, Deacon leaned his head back with an easy smile. “I’ll leave you ladies here, I guess. I have to go and see about selling some of this crap Bullseye had me lugging everywhere.”

He turned to leave and Penny called, “If you sell those microscopes you’re a dead man!” but he just waved and continued on. Sighing, Penny turned back to Desdemona.

“I assume Deacon’s already told you what needs to be done,” she asked before bringing her cigarette to her lips.

Penny watched the end flare as she inhaled, chewing on her lip and hungry for a smoke. “I’m moving a girl to a new life.”

“Yes, and she asked for you specifically.” Dez looked around and gestured for something to be brought over. “We figured it’d be more practical to call you back than run the risk of upsetting her.”

“What do you—” Penny started, already turning to look at what she was looking at, but a girl yelling cut her off.

“It’s _you!”_ the voice called.

Penny turned away from Desdemona completely and saw a chubby girl staring at her, eyes wide and just a bit disbelieving. “You know me?”

She got to Penny and rolled nervously on the backs of her feet. “I saw you in the Institute before it blew up! You set us all free.”

Penny’s mouth quirked to the side as she looked up at her. The girl was anxiously rubbing a lock of dark red hair between her fingers, her tan freckled face not meeting Penny’s eyes.

“I gotta say I don’t recognize you,” Penny said, crossing her arms.

“No, I didn’t think you would,” she said. She looked to the side nervously, clearly at least a little intimidated by Desdemona.

Catching the hint, Dez tapped her cigarette off. “This is the relocation job we brought you in for,” she said, taking a drag. Starting to walk away towards where Deacon had disappeared to, she instructed Penny to take the girl to Tom when he was finished calibrating his machine.

“I got a face job,” she said when she'd left. “The red hair’s too recognizable, so I had to change _something.”_

Penny smiled, sharp as always. “You miss it?”

She nodded. “Not for long, though.”

“That’s right,” Penny said. She looked behind her at the rig Tom was fiddling with across the room. “What's your name?”

“H3-42! But I picked Theresa.” The girl pulled her coat tighter around herself and dug her hands into her pockets. “It's easier to remember.”

Penny hummed in agreement, peering at Tom again. He was signaling her over. “Time for the show,” she said, jerking her chin towards him.

Theresa turned and chewed on her lip. “He’s been calibrating it for hours, I can’t believe it’s finally done.”

Penny ushered her over, nervous about leaving Danse at the entrance for too long. “He’s insane, but he’s good at what he does.”

“He asked me what I wanted to remember earlier,” Theresa said quietly, looking at the ground out of the corner of her eye. “He’s really… enthusiastic.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Penny muttered in an aside as they came to Tom. Looking at the chair and slew of wires he’d set up, she raised an eyebrow.

“What?” he asked, moving a bundle of cables so Theresa didn’t trip over them.

“This thing is gonna explode or catch on fire, isn't it?” Penny asked, running her finger over one of the towers he had around his porthole computer. “Or collapse?”

“‘Course not!” he said indignantly. Then he turned and looked at it with her, adjusting the big monitor above the chair. “Well, it hasn’t yet.”

Penny rolled her eyes and scooted Theresa to the barber chair Tom had affixed to this terrifying machine. The girl hesitated, looking at the big black monitor above the chair and the gnarled pneumatic hinges holding it all together. “This is safe, right?”

Tom huffed and pulled his helmet down over his eyes, already behind his desk and tapping on his keyboard. “Compared to an actual memory lounger? Relatively.”

“Don’t be a dick, Tom,” Penny sighed. She pointed at the chair again and Theresa jumped a little, anxiously tapping her fingers on an arm before swinging one leg into a stirrup.

She climbed into the chair, eyes flicking nervously around. Oddly comforted by Penny’s presence, she grabbed her hand. “Is it weird that I’m scared?”

Penny looked down at her, unsure of what to really _do._ She wasn't the comforting type, especially towards strangers. “You're allowed to be afraid. You won't be later.”

“I guess that’s true. I _want_ this.” Theresa turned back and looked at the blank screen, still holding Penny’s hand. “Can I tell you something?”

“Might as well.” _Otherwise I’ll never hear it._

“I requested you,” she confessed. “I asked for the one who blew up the Institute, with the pointy nose.”

“Flattering.”

“You look just like Father,” she went on, looking back up at Penny. “We were told his mother had come to see him, but we all thought he'd gotten it wrong. You look more like his daughter.”

Penny swallowed, her throat uncomfortably tight. She took her hand out of Theresa’s and patted at her pockets anxiously for a moment before she remembered she didn't carry cigarettes anymore. Clearing her throat, she looked at the synth girl.

“You didn't tell anyone here, did you?” she asked, tone clipped and harsh.

“No,” she answered quickly, shrinking back a little.

“Good,” Penny said, smoothing down the front of her coat. “Lie back, Tom should be starting it up any second.”

Theresa complied, looking afraid and still shaken by Penelope’s quick change in demeanor. Penny felt bad for a second before she reminded herself that the girl wasn't going to remember anything for much longer.

Tom came over and quickly briefed them both on the entire process, and by the look on Theresa’s face, she’d heard it all before already.

The two of them stood back by his desk, away from the chair. Theresa kept her head turned to look at Penny, her expression curious, but Tom told her to look back at the screen. She didn’t turn back after that.

Tom was bent over his keyboard typing for a few seconds before the machine turned on. He pulled his mask down over his face and Penny followed suit with her goggles, unsure of what he was protecting his eyes from exactly but not willing to take a chance. Oddly, she couldn’t see that much was actually happening, but she noticed the screen jumping to life and Theresa’s eyes widening in fear before it looked like she… _shut down._ It was the only way to describe it, and Penny was reminded of all the synths she saw deactivated and how uncomfortable it was to see another person in such a prone comatose state.

“This isn’t gonna kill her or anything?” Penny asked, looking from the girl to Tom. He was coaxing a data feed out of a small printer.

“There’s a _very_ slim chance, but if something goes wrong it’s taking out all of us,” Tom said, considering the data printout he got. “But I’m more interested in why it took you so long to get here.”

“Bad traffic,” she muttered, peering around him at the paper. It was mostly code that she couldn’t make sense of at a glance.

“Didn’t realize it turned the trip into months.”

“Deacon just told me recently,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. “We came quickly after that.”

“With a plus one, I heard.” He tapped a few more strings into his keyboard and then turned to her. “And who’s the giant you left at the door, anyway?” Tom asked, pushing his mask up.

Penny looked at the chipped wall across the room, skin prickling at the awareness that Danse was on the other side. Probably pacing and worrying, if she knew him well enough. “He’s a… friend,” she answered, _sure_ she knew him well enough to call him _that_ at least.

Tom looked at the porthole screen in front of himself, Theresa still lying prone in the chair. “Dez almost threw a fit when she heard he was coming with you,” he said. “Why’re you dragging Brotherhood around still? I thought we got ‘em all.”

“Ex-Brotherhood,” Penny clarified. Then again, he would never _be_ ex—not really, anyway. Clearing her throat, she watched him type and scroll, afraid that they’d try to do something to Danse. “He’s a synth, actually.”

Tom pulled a crooked grin before hitting a few more buttons with finality. He moved around the table and adjusted Theresa in the machine. “Hence the _ex_ , I guess,” he said before pulling his mask down again.

Penny snorted and pulled her goggles down, tightening the strap and blinking as the room got a little darker. “It was a messy break-up,” she muttered, tired of the way the Brotherhood still held onto her.

It wasn’t the kind of thing that you could really _leave_ , she guessed. Nate had come back to her, but he’d been different too. When that kind of rigidity and direction was gone from your life, you’d never really come _back_ from it.

Penny watched as H3-42 was wiped away and the girl was left blinking and dazed. For just a few moments, she looked completely _empty_ , receptive and mellow like someone blinking out of a coma. Then, Tom tuned the machine and coaxed her to lie all the way back again, sliding a pair of heavy headphones onto her, and they waited. Her body tensed and relaxed while her eyes opened wide and scrolled quickly across the screen. Out of curiosity, Penny peered at the screen and saw complete gibberish before Tom pulled her back out of the way.

“It doesn’t do anything to regular humans, right?” she asked quietly.

“Nah, we don’t have anything that can be overwritten,” Tom said, shaking his head. “I know the Institute’s tried, though. Fried a couple dozen settlers that way.”

Penny arched an eyebrow. “That a fact?”

“You sound like you don’t believe me, but _I_ know the truth.” He crossed his arms and turned towards his computer, punching in a few entries. “They tried to crack humans like they were a code, but they couldn’t! So they made synthetic ones instead that they could program from the start.”

“Maybe lay off the mentats, Tom.”

He huffed, tapping out another few lines before entering it and turning towards where Theresa was, her body having gone limp now. “The chems keep me sharper than anyone else here. We can't afford for me to be firing on fewer cylinders.”

Penny sighed and helped him move the screen out of the way, taking the headphones off of Theresa and watching as her head lolled to the side. “Just don't overdo it, I guess.”

“I know my limits,” he scoffed, pushing his mask up again. _Better than anyone else_ followed in an aside, but Penny ignored him.

They fell silent, watching as Theresa twitched a little and lolled, looking like she was fighting anesthesia. It was always uncomfortable to see someone else so exposed and vulnerable, and it frightened Penny in a base way to watch a synth get wiped and rewritten. There was a nervous bubbling in her guts, and she couldn’t quite place why it unnerved her like it did. It wasn’t like she knew anything about H3-42 that she was going to miss.

“You know,” Tom said suddenly. “We can help out your friend waiting out there if he wants. A mindwipe to get rid of the programming the Brotherhood does themselves.”

Penny looked at him blankly, startled that he’d been thinking about it. “No, I don't think he'd want that,” she said, voice hoarse and nervous. The idea that Danse could just be… _reset_ had never occurred to her, but hearing it suggested made her nauseous enough to throw up.

“He should know it’s an option,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of people come to us and jump at the opportunity to remember better things.”

“Sometimes memories are all you have left, though,” she said, swallowing thickly. “Don’t offer it again, Tom.”

He gave a short, loud laugh before walking to the synth girl and moving the screen out of the way. “Hey, I’m not gonna force anything. I’m not the Institute.”

Penny followed him, mood lightening a little at the his joking tone. “ _No one’s_ the Institute anymore.”

He grinned and she smiled to herself, glad for a little levity in face of what they were doing. The subject of the Institute was still tender, but maybe if she joked about it enough it wouldn’t hurt as much. After all, everything only hurt if she focused on it for too long. This one cut deeper, but if there was anything she good at, it was ignoring her own problems.

They watched Theresa as she came to a little while after falling limp, her expression empty and body slow. She had trouble standing, and when Penny said her name questioningly, she just blinked at her and stumbled, Penny catching her before she could land on the grimy floor. The girl managed to straighten herself up after that, and Tom started checking her.

He shined a light in both of her eyes and had her repeat a few phrases back to him, Theresa slow to answer but saying them correctly. He asked her a few questions about who she was and where she was, and after looking around in dazed confusion for almost a full two minutes, she said she didn’t know. Tom straightened up and said it’d worked, but Penny felt almost sick looking at the blank confusion on the girl.

“Hey, Tom?” she asked, still watching Theresa, the girl now examining the zipper on her coat.

He’d gone back to his terminals, reading a few more print-outs. “Something else you need?”

“She’s not gonna remember any of this, right?”

“No, she’s not gonna remember anything until she wakes up tomorrow.” He put the papers down and shuffled a few things around.

Penny thought about that in silence for a bit, staring at Theresa as she messed with a loose box that had been resting by the chair. Turning back to Tom, she took a deep breath. “Remember the files I pulled from the Institute for the Brotherhood?”

“The ones you gave to us right after them?”

“Yeah,” she said, chewing on her lips anxiously for a second, looking at Theresa out of the corner of her eye. “Can you do me a favor?”

Tinker Tom still had all of the files on the synths in the Institute, though, both missing and in active circulation. Unsure of what possessed her in that moment, be it morbid curiosity or a way to strain her feelings for Danse because she was sure she must be in love with her own unhappiness, she asked Tom if he could give her them on a tape. Not all of the entries would fit, but she said it was alright; she only needed one.

Walking away from him with Theresa following limply, she had a holodisk with M7-97’s entry on it. The flimsy tape felt weirdly heavy in her hands, her gut tangling itself into knots over the prospect of reading it. As the girl grew more and more lax and unresponsive, in need of physical support, Penny pocketed the tape to free her hand to help hold her up.

As she was guiding Theresa away from Tom, two vaguely familiar faces came over and reached for the synth girl, saying they had to outfit her for travel now, it’d only take a few minutes. Giving her to the two other operatives, Penny spotted Deacon in a corner of the room having a cigarette. She jogged over, tugging on her sleeves as she started sweating again, body aching for a smoke.

“Saw your first mindwipe, huh?” he asked when she was within earshot.

She nodded, looking away as he took a drag. “It was certainly something.”

“You can say it,” he said, tapping the ashes off. “It’s like, the freakiest thing to see.”

Her mouth quirked to the side as she glanced back to where Theresa was getting fitted with a backpack. “I don’t really understand how someone’s memories can get replaced like that.”

“You know, I asked that exact question when I joined up.”

“You get an answer?”

He took a hit and tapped it off again, eyebrows raising. “Synth brains are wired differently. Apparently that synth chip lets the Institute do some crazy shit to them.”

Penny frowned, trying not to breathe through her nose. “Memories, though?” She sighed and rubbed at the back of her neck, acutely aware of the holodisc in her pocket. “Those make you who you are, are practically your entire personality.”

“All we do for them is _add_ or repress memories. The personality can’t be changed.” Deacon took another drag before crushing the butt against the wall and shrugging. “Then again that could just be a load of shit Carrington said just to fuck with me. Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“I don’t think he has time to waste fucking with you,” she commented, shouldering her pack. “Can we get this show on the road though? I’m getting… uncomfortable with leaving Danse back there for so long.”

Deacon quirked an eyebrow, pushing away from the wall. “You think he’s got a problem with waiting?”

“Here? For over an hour? Yes, definitely.”

He laughed once, shrugging a little. “We should get goin’ anyway.” He picked his pack up from the floor and shrugged it on, pots and a kettle clinking on the back.

Penny did the same and tightened the straps around her middle. “You have a date or something?”

“I’ve been on one with you and Danse for almost two weeks,” he said, laughing a little at himself.

She made a noise of disgust and followed him to the mouth of the HQ where Theresa was outfitted and standing limply, supported by two lesser Railroad members. “It wasn't very romantic with you around, Deac.”

“Hey, I’m surprised he made it this far.” They slowed down, Deacon taking a second to pat around his pack’s pockets. “Last time Danse caught wind of us, he split faster than an atom bomb.”

“That’s _not_ funny, Deacon,” she said, frowning deeply.

He pulled out his hat and jammed it back on “Wasn’t supposed to be,” he said, starting to walk back to the entrance.

She jogged a little to keep up with him, mad at his dismissal of her feelings. The tensions on their relationship were understandable, but she couldn’t help but want things to go back to normal. So much of her time the past few months had been burned on wishing for that, and normal wasn’t even an option on the table anymore.

Just before the entrance to the HQ, the two operatives met and briefed her on how to handle Theresa for the next few days, saying she’d be confused and receptive to suggestions for a time. She’d believe pretty much anything she was told, and they trusted Penny wouldn’t take advantage of that. She assured them they had nothing to worry about; she came _here_ didn’t she?

That seemed like enough, and one programmed the coordinates for the settlement Theresa was going to into her Pip-Boy while the other handed her a small letter for the contact at the settlement. It was a lot to take in at once, but it didn’t take long before they were being shuffled out of the HQ without more than a quick goodbye, both Deacon and Penelope supporting the synth girl as she listed.

As they came out, the first thing Penny saw was Danse staring at the entrance, clearly waiting for her. A combination of relief and determination washed over his face, and she was confused about the mix, but grateful to just see him again. The tape in her pocket felt heavy, and she put it out of her mind just for the beautiful concern his eyes held for her.

“Well,” Deacon said, as soon as they were close enough to Danse for him to pass his burden of Theresa over. “This was fun, but I’ve gotta leave it to you kids from here.”

Penny frowned, adjusting the way she was supporting Theresa. “You're not coming with us?”

“Nah,” Deacon said, shrugging. “I’ve gotta do some recon for Dez, and then I’ll probably go back to Sanctuary.” Behind his glasses, Penny could just barely make out the shadow of his eyes as they flicked towards Danse. “Besides, fourth wheel isn't exactly my style.”

Penny huffed, struggling with the girl again before Danse reached and helped, lifting her dazed body easily. Penny straightened up and fixed her coat, eyeing Deacon. “Maybe it's for the best. You’d probably just spook Theresa,” she said.

Deacon cracked a grin, crooked and funny. “More like I gotta get back and check on my potted tatos. They were just beginning to bloom when I left, and I’m worried Curie’s been overwatering them.”

“You're so full of shit,” Penny snorted, laughing despite the obvious lie. She swung her pack around and fished inside of it, pulling out a dented toy car, anger from earlier petering out. Handing it to Deacon, she said, “Give this to Shaun, then, he said he needed the small screws for something.”

Deacon took it and pocketed it. “Any other errands you need me to run for you?”

She gave him a withering look and crossed her arms, Danse sighing in exasperation behind her. “Make sure he's been taking care of himself,” she said. “Oh, and tell him that I love him. And I miss him, and can't wait to see him again.”

“Jesus, Penny, you want me to tell him to clean his room while I’m at it?”

She grinned. “Might be nice to give him a reminder.”

Deacon tipped his hat back and smiled, this one even more crooked and genuine. “I’ll be sure to kiss him goodnight for you, but I don't think he’ll be fooled. I’m a lot taller than you are.”

Penny rolled her eyes and unfolded her arms. “You and half the Commonwealth,” she muttered, shoving him towards the mouth of the entrance. “Now let's get going before you piss me off again.”

Deacon actually stuck around inside the HQ while Penelope and Danse lugged the synth girl out. She had her suspicions as to why he'd split, but as they trudged further through the derelict tunnels, she remembered how uncomfortable the past two weeks had felt. After that, she couldn’t really blame him for not wanting to stick around.

They walked through the catacombs quickly, Theresa dazed and unresponsive, but she let them drag her through. Daylight was trickling away through the broken glass windows in the church by the time they hit the surface. The silence that had fallen was expected but she still didn’t like it, skin crawling with the knowledge that things between her and Danse were still rocky, and going to be until this entire mission was complete.

“You know, I lied at the entrance,” Penny said as they emerged outside. She took Theresa and helped support her while Danse reached for his helmet.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “What do you mean?”

She grinned, adjusting Theresa. “I think you’re _very_ pretty.”

Danse huffed and latched his helmet back on, but she could see how red he turned and the small smile he tried to hide.

The trip after that was short. There were only a few more hours of sunlight left when they got out, and the thick gray clouds were threatening rain or snow. The settlement the synth girl was supposed to go to was far south, too, close to Jamaica Plains, and Penny wasn’t keen on getting sick from exposure on just the first day of travel.

They found a half-collapsed building with an intact basement to sleep in, the walls still sealed and with no water or snow inside. The smell was stale and ancient, but it was as clean as could be found and was sturdy enough to be trusted not to collapse, so it did well for them.

That first night, Penny sat with Danse while the synth girl slept, still dazed and confused from the mindwipe. The thin sleeping bag she’d been given in her backpack wasn’t thick enough, and even though she didn’t speak, Penny could see her shivering, freezing even through her numb confusion. Penny gave her her own, figuring she could spare it and double up with Danse. Watching her sleep with Danse staring at her with an odd look of concentration on his face, Penny bumped him with her elbow.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

He blinked, still looking at her for a moment before he turned towards Penny, the little fire they’d made throwing fast shadows on his face. “What did they do to her?”

“A mindwipe,” she said. Scooting a little closer, she pulled her pack with her and rifled around inside of it. “They covered all of her memories with different ones.”

“Covered,” he said slowly, looking back at her as she slept. “Not erased. Theoretically they could be recovered, then?”

Uneasiness started bubbling in her gut at his line of questioning, fear of Tom’s offer from earlier compounding and multiplying. “With her recall code,” she said, pulling out a can of water.

“Do you know it?”

“Why do you wanna know?” she snapped, frowning.

“I’m not going to _use it_ ,” he said sternly. “I’m only curious as to how much information on these synths the Railroad actually possesses.”

“Well… _all_ of it, I guess,” she said after pausing for a moment. “All they use it for are mind wipes and relocations, though.” _Helping them, mostly._

He huffed, picking through his pack for something. “It’s ridiculous to think that a synth’s mind is weak enough to be reprogrammed like that.”

The way he’d said it sounded like every time he’d spoken about himself last spring. It sounded like self-loathing and an unwillingness to accept where his future was taking him. With everything he’d said lately and the distance in his eyes she saw when he thought she wasn’t looking, it felt again like he wasn’t as at peace with his identity as he’d lead her to believe he was.

“Speaking of ridiculous, Tom even said they could give _you_ new memories,” she said, laughing nervously at the direction the conversation had taken. “Like you’d ever want _that.”_

He jumped, arm still in his pack and eyes wide. Slowly, he brought his arm back and looked up at the fire, clearing his throat. “He offered that to you?”

“It wasn’t an _offer,”_ she said quickly, backtracking and hating herself for even bringing it up. “He just said they could, or that you might want it.”

She wanted him to say _Of course I don’t want that,_ or something equally resolute, but he just stared into the fire again. It didn’t even look like he was considering doing it, but like he was just thinking about how it would feel. Or at least, that’s what she hoped the silence meant.

She bumped him with her elbow, growing uncomfortable with the look on his face. “Crazy, huh?” she asked, laughing nervously.

Danse cleared his throat, eyes glazed as he looked over at his pack in front of himself. “Ridiculous.”

He fell silent after that, and Penny swallowed anxiously as she turned back to the fire. It was sickening how awful she felt at bringing up the mindwipe, not knowing how he would’ve reacted. Pensive thought wasn’t what she’d expected. Vehement refusal was what she’d _wanted_ , but knew she wasn’t going to get. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure what she should’ve expected; there were things about him she just didn’t know.

“Hey,” she said softly, reaching out and covering the back of his hand with hers. “We’re ok, right?”

He blinked a few times and looked at her. Turning his hand over so he could lace their fingers together, he cleared his throat. “We’re ok.”

“I’m still glad you’re here,” she said, unsure of what else to say.

He sighed through his nose and nodded, looking back at the fire. “I am too.” Standing, he kicked dirt over it and stomped out the embers before stretching and rubbing his eyes. “I’m going to go to bed.”

“I’ll go too,” she said quickly, standing. “I gave Theresa my sleeping bag, her's was too thin.”

“You’ll sleep in mine then,” he said as he lifted it, unrolling the pack.

She felt relieved that he hadn’t even questioned it, followed by the want to kick herself for thinking he would. There was no reason it should feel weird, but it _did_ , in a strange way. The tension of the last conversation, the tension of the past few weeks, the tension they both always just _carried_ , it felt odd to ask him for affection.

He unrolled the sleeping bag and stripped down, just in his underclothes before he climbed in. Penny followed suit but paused before getting in, Danse looking at her curiously as she crouched in front of the open pack.

“Are you coming in?” he asked, holding the flap open for her.

She chewed on her lip, picking at the teeth on the zipper. “I want you to kiss me first.”

The synth girl shuffled a little in her sleep behind them, and they both looked at her for a moment before turning back to each other. “You don’t have to ask,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Her mouth quirked to the side, eyes trying to get a better look at him in the low light. “I didn’t.”

He huffed a little and reached a hand out for her, pulling her into the sleeping bag. She smiled a little as he pressed his lips to her forehead, then to bridge of her nose. She tilted her head up and kissed him on the mouth, almost pushing it further before she remembered Theresa asleep three feet away.

Danse dropped off quickly after she pressed her lips to the feral scars on his neck a few times, murmuring a goodnight to him. There was something in the way his body relaxed for her that set her at ease, made that distance between them she couldn’t help but feel not so wide anymore. Even as she lied there awake for almost an hour, she felt safe, but her mind wandered to the tape she'd gotten from Tom earlier.

Unable to sleep, she reached out for her Pip-Boy and snapped in the holotape. She turned the dials and pulled it up, tapping the screen anxiously for a few seconds, contemplating if she really did want to read it. Behind her, Danse made a noise in his sleep and shuffled a little, his hand running up her bare stomach.

She paused and held her breath, waiting for him to wake up, but he didn’t. With a sigh, she hung her head for a moment before turning the screen off and putting the Pip-Boy down. She wiggled back into the pack and nestled into his arms, letting her eyes close as he smushed his face into her hair.

The next morning, she woke up feeling achy and anxious, the conversation with Danse the night before still weighing heavily on her mind. To add to it, he felt distant, even when she woke up and he was already awake and just tracing little circles on her stomach. The feeling compounded into something ugly in her gut until she just sat down and waited for Theresa to wake up, her stomach churning and neck stiff.

Penny watched her as she woke up, Danse feeling tight as he stood next to her. Theresa’s eyes opened slowly, her face serene as if she was coming out of a particularly good dream. It quickly turned to confusion followed by fear as she sat bolt upright, almost toppling over from how tightly she was zipped into the sleeping bags. Penny raised an eyebrow at the struggling girl as she fought to free herself, trying to look disinterred as she finally squirmed out.

“You feelin’ alright, kid?” she asked dully, Theresa scrambling to her feet.

“I don’t…” she started, looking around. Her eyes widened when they landed on Danse, imposing even before he was in his power armor. They flicked back to Penny, hazy and afraid. “Where am I? Who are _you?”_

Penny frowned at her as she stood, brushing the dust off of her pants. “You paid us to protect you, don’t you remember?” she said, walking over to her pack. “That blow must’ve been worse than we thought.”

She blinked a few times before rubbing at her head. “What do you mean?”

“Raider got you with a bat before we could get to him.” Penny fished around in her bag for a can of water, coming out with one and a few pieces of dried radstag. Offering them to Theresa, the girl took them slowly, looking at them like she didn’t know what to do with them.

She took a deep breath and looked from the food in her hands to Penny. “Is that why my head hurts?”

 _No._ “Probably. Unless you hit your head while you were sleeping, you were thrashing around a _lot.”_

She blinked like some confusion was leaving and finally started looking at her surroundings. “Can you… remind me what you’re doing here, then?”

“Christ, kid,” Penny said, shrugging her coat on before tossing Theresa her own. “You hired us to bring you home to Jamaica Plains. You said something about going to see family there. You really don’t remember?”

“I don’t…” she started, kneading her coat in her hands. She glanced over at Danse and just seemed more confused. “Yeah, I’m… moving in with my Aunt Rebecca?”

Penny rubbed at the back of her neck and yawned, letting her eyes close as a headache started. “Whatever. I don’t know the details, you only paid us to keep you safe.”

She heard the girl shrug her coat on and the sound of the zipper, but she paused. “Can I ask how long we’ve been out here?”

“Stop asking so many questions,” Penny snapped, frustrated at her lack of sleep and the incessant way she just kept _talking_.

Theresa’s mouth closed quickly, her face flushing darkly as she looked down and to the side, clearly embarrassed. Penny felt a little guilt creeping up, but she crushed it down and just started breaking down their camp so they could move. Danse helped her, and it felt like he had questions too, but there was that distance in him that unnerved her. It made her feel better that he didn’t ask her anything, because she was sure she wasn’t going to like them, or her answers.

The day from there was quiet, Theresa extremely silent. She receded into herself, and the operatives at the HQ had told her she’d be like this, but actually experiencing it grated on Penelope in an unitchable way. She felt annoyed and anxious, irate at Theresa and herself. That first night, bringing up the mindwipe, had been a mistake, and Danse had seemed oddly distant since then. Her frustration and anxiousness was misdirected at Theresa, but she couldn’t keep them away.

They found a basement to sleep in that was dry and empty that night. The whole thing felt remarkably boring, Penelope sure she’d imagined this entire ordeal to be less… _regular._ Then again, there wasn’t anything wrong with a little regularity, especially in a life like hers that hadn’t had anything like it in the past year. It was comforting to be with Danse in that way, even with Theresa there in the background.

Spending more time together, the both of them feeling like they’d snapped into that regular rhythm, and it got easier for Penny to picture herself with him. Each night, while Theresa huddled to herself or read the books Penny gave her, she noticed all those little things she used to about Danse.

When he finished eating, he folded the cartons up as many times as he could before throwing them away. He crushed all of the wrappers into tight little balls that crinkled as he rolled them in his hands. There was his habit of scratching at his neck when he was deep in thought, or how he inadvertently moved his ears a little when he was concentrating.

Sometimes, when he had nothing to do, he’d anxiously bounce his leg and Penny remembered that little action like it was from a past life. Addiction and cravings still slugged through her veins, and when she saw him start to drum his fingers or shake his leg she’d give him a gentle touch or soft look. Somehow, it seemed like it made him feel better.

There was an uncomfortable feeling of responsibility in being that much to someone else, and after so many months of pulling back what they’d had, Penny found herself weighed down by it at times. It wasn’t bad, but it felt strange to carry how he felt with her and not feel comfortable with what he had from _her_. Because God knew she wasn’t perfect, but sometimes with the way Danse looked at her like she was everything, it made it feel like those weeks before he’d left where he hadn’t seemed to realise it yet.

On the third night, they came across a strip of old stores. There were a couple of raiders that had turned an old barbershop into a chop shop, but they died quickly. Theresa was sick after seeing the dismembered body parts that were strewn around, and Penny awkwardly patted her back for lack of something better to do. Danse was the one who gave her fresh water and second scarf to wrap around her face so she wouldn’t be able to smell the decaying corpses. She seemed more comfortable around him after that.

Most of the other buildings were empty, though they still had many of their old stock. They weren’t food stores, so most of what had been there had just been left to rot over time. One was a small toy store, and Penny almost swiped an entire row of toy cars into her pack before Danse snapped at her that she was clearly carrying too much. She conceded and only took a few, though she made him take all of the cameras in sight. Shaun would want them.

In a half-busted crate in the back of the store, she found something she hadn’t seen since before the vault, though. It was a little soldier toy, though it was old and a few of the joints had fused didn’t work anymore. The tiny plastic figurine was worn-down and dirty, the details mostly rubbed off but it was clearly a set of power armor. After Shaun was born, she remembered getting a pack of soldier toys as a gift from her cousin, meant for him when he was older. The half-melted figure in her hand looked like it could’ve been from that set in a better life.

She pocketed it without a second thought, not really taking it for any other reason than that she didn’t want to leave it. As much as she wasn’t the Penny who’d received the gift, she still missed what the broken toy represented. Maybe she’d give it to Danse or Shaun, though they probably wouldn’t have anything to use it for. Maybe she should just keep it for herself.

The building they found to sleep in that night was half-collapsed, the east-facing wall totally busted in while the overhang from the trees and upper balcony kept the wind and snow out. It didn’t offer complete protection from prying eyes, and Danse immediately said he was taking first watch as Theresa tossed her sleeping bag out.

They ate quietly around the meager fire they made, Theresa still looking like she was too nervous to even breathe around the two of them. Penny was almost offended by it until she thought about the way the two of them must look, especially to someone in as such a fragile state as a freshly mind wiped synth. She could maybe see how they’d come off as intimidating.

Theresa took Penelope’s sleeping bag again, curled up, and shivered until she fell asleep. Danse seemed more relaxed after she was out, sitting and leaning back against the wall to take first watch. Penny sat with him, curled into the warmth of his side, and looked at Theresa, thinking back on the past few days.

“Unfortunate Desdemona,” Penelope muttered, watching the synth girl sleep.

“Did you say something?” Danse asked.

She shrugged. “Dez’s name. Did you ever read _Othello?_ It’s a play.”

“I believe the scribes at the Arlington Library maintained a copy, though I never read it.” Danse shifted the gun in his lap, Penny leaning in to rest her head on his shoulder. He lifted his arm and she wiggled under it, sighing as he held her closely. “Why?”

“Desdemona was murdered by her husband when he was convinced she was cheating on him.” She yawned, eyes feeling heavy from his body heat.

“It sounds like a waste,” he said. His hand tightened on her, thumb brushing over the exposed skin on her hip.

She hummed softly, eyes sliding shut. “I’m just remembering having to write a report on it in high school. The name means ‘unfortunate.’”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

“It doesn’t really. I was wondering why she named herself that.”

“Self-pity,” he said simply.

Penny’s mouth pulled into a half-smile as she turned her face into him and sighed. “Probably.”

They were silent for a moment, the insects and wind brushing quietly through the cold February air. Penny shivered and Danse started rubbing her, the warmth seeping in almost lulling her to sleep. “I’ve forgotten what they called you at the base,” he said quietly, trying to keep her awake for a little longer.

“Bullseye,” she murmured, grinning.

Danse gave a short laugh, giving her a light squeeze. “You chose that name for yourself.”

“It felt fitting!”

“Do you have a reasoning?” he asked and she could hear the slight smile in his voice.

Penny felt her grin widen, sharp like everything else about her. “I almost said ‘Charmer,’ but when have I ever missed the mark?”

He snorted like he was surprised he’d laughed at it. She smiled into his side, trying to stay awake a little longer, but the stress of the day wore on her until she was asleep. It was a peaceful sleep, albiet a little short, but she knew Danse wasn’t going to split the watch evenly. And sure enough, she managed to get almost five hours before Danse shook her.

He woke her up for the dawn shift, and she sat propped up against the wall with her rifle across her knees and Danse’s head in her lap. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, her other hand gently combed through his hair until she felt him fall asleep, snoring quietly on his side. It was a peaceful moment, the night quiet and she felt comfortable that they were safe from raiders or the odd animal that had woken up too early.

Hesitating for a moment, she turned the dials on her Pip-Boy until she got to the holotape she’d snapped in the night before. Earlier, she’d been unable to bring herself to read it, but now she felt surer with him so solid in her lap. Curiosity for his past and purpose itched in her palms, and to know that she could’ve gotten it at any time had she thought to ask, made her, well… almost angry.

M7-97’s entry was frustratingly short. It was at most eight sentences, and all it did was tell her what she’d already suspected. A special infiltration synth modeled after Brotherhood Paladin Danse, acquired and implanted entirely with the original Danse’s memories, then placed back into the Commonwealth while the human Danse was terminated.

Finally reading his entry felt… lacking. His entire existence was summarized in four short lines and a few model tags for _unit identification._ It didn’t even have a date for when it had happened and Penny was _sure_ that wasn’t what closure felt like. If anything it felt like she knew _less_ , only seeing what the Brotherhood had before they’d made the decision to murder their most trusted member.

Dawn found her tired with her hand in Danse’s hair, gently rubbing her thumb over the top of his ear. Nothing had happened during the night, and she almost wished something had so she wouldn’t have had to just sit there and think. There was something acutely awful in not having anything to occupy herself after reading the holotape, and she couldn’t even focus enough to read or play a game.

She gently woke up Danse before moving to Theresa, being just a little kinder than necessary to the girl. It felt like she was making up for all the other wrongs in her own life by being softer than she should’ve been, but she felt herself feel lighter at the way Theresa immediately seemed more comfortable even after just the slightest hint of kindness from Penelope. It helped keep her mind off of the distance she felt from Danse.

They traveled for almost a week straight after that, Penny pushing her frustration at the entry out of her mind. It wasn’t worth it to think about, and really she'd suspected almost all of it already. Given what she’d seen, it wasn’t impossible to think that the entire point of Danse’s existence was to just cause fear, and the Brotherhood’s reaction made more sense now. Not a _lot_ of sense, but more.

The last day of travel before they would finally get to the settlement went without much incident. There was a problem with the snowdrifts, but Danse easily lifted the girls over the dunes. Nothing bothered them save a small group of three raiders that barely even seemed to realize they were dead before it was all over. Theresa was surprised, face curved towards awe as she watched the efficiency Penny and Danse had together. At this point battle movement was second nature, both hardly having to say anything before falling into place.

As they resumed walking after that, Penny suspected there was a slight fear in Theresa for how efficiently they’d put down the raiders. She remembered experiencing it herself when she’d first climbed out of the vault and it felt like anyone could kill her like it was nothing before she even got a shot in; the overwhelming realization of your own lack of skill in the face of someone who could kill you without ever letting you know they were even there.

Granted, Theresa was probably glad they were the ones _protecting_ her, then.

A few hours after the sun had gone down, Penny was contemplating calling it a night, but they were still in too crowded of an area to make camp. The buildings of South Boston were decrepit but somehow still stood through the chaos there, and could be housing anything from super mutants to raiders to feral ghouls just waiting for someone unfortunate enough to stumble upon them.

“When do you—?” she started asking as she jogged closer to Danse, but the back of his power armor hissed and beeped, the drained fusion core popping out and hitting her in the chest. She wheezed, not so much winded as she was surprised and startled by the intensity of the heat radiating off of it.

It took Danse a second to realize what had happened when he turned and felt how stiff the suit was. Theresa was just standing there, shocked by the strangeness of the entire thing.

“What was _that?”_ she asked while Danse quickly reached for Penny.

“My fusion core was drained and ejected,” he said curtly. His tone softened as he looked at Penny, the insectoid eyes of his helmet reflecting her face. “Did it hurt you at all?”

She coughed a little more and kicked the dead fusion core, the ice it had landed in half-melted already. “I’m fine, just startled by it,” she said, clearing her throat and breathing evenly to stop her heart’s pounding. “Lemme give you a new one.” She reached around to grab her pack.

“I have three in my bag,” he said, already reaching behind himself to unlatch the back plate so she could reach his pack.

“It’s fine,” she said, reaching inside her own and coming up with a core. “I carry extra ones now.”

He cleared his throat and took a knee so she could punch the new core in. Penny could feel Theresa’s eyes on her as she did it, not particularly caring, though Danse seemed to be embarrassed by the implications of her carrying extra ones _now._ Squinting through the relative darkness, Penny took a deep breath, about to ask again if they should make camp, but something rustled and fell over a few yards off, the distinct sounds of heavy feet on metal grating following.

“Did you hear that?” she asked quietly.

Danse nodded. “Given the area and… _stench_ , it’s likely super mutants.” The whine of his safety snapping off accompanied the words.

Theresa’s eyes widened, face paling a little. “ _Super mutants?”_ she whispered quietly in a panic, grabbing the arm of Penny’s coat tightly.

“You know, big and green and fucking awful.” Penny snapped a new clip into her rifle before jerking her arm out of Theresa’s fingers and rifling in her pack. She pulled out three grenades and a pipe pistol. Handing the gun to her, she said, “Don’t shoot unless anything gets close to you.”

She mumbled, _I know what they_ are, under her breath, but Penny ignored it. She pointed to a tight corner made by two buildings meeting at the back of a dumpster and told her to stay there if she didn’t want to get herself killed. Theresa obliged, but not before accidentally kicking over a few empty bottles and thoroughly tipping the super mutants off.

“We couldn’t hide forever,” Danse muttered. A few surprised grunts came from the super mutants and the distinct beep of a mini nuke started.

“Now we don’t have a goddamn choice.” Penny started creeping around the car, pulling the pin out of a grenade as she went. “And a fucking suicider too.”

Battles were often over quickly, she found. It was fast, how quickly a bullet to the skull could win anything. A mongrel stopped in its tracks, a raider bleeding out because he’d lost half of his body, a lucky shot that took out a turret; all it really took was a second for it to happen. Either they died or she died, and so far it’d always been them. And things so did tend to die remarkably easily with her.

The grenade took out four super mutants and a hound while Danse bum rushed two others. The suicider somehow managed to stay out of the blast, and Penny fumbled with her gun as the beeping grew uncomfortably close. Distantly, she heard Danse shouting as another super mutant died and her hands shook with adrenaline and pure nervous _fear_ as she nearly unloaded her clip into the suicider as it came into view around the corner of a distant building.

It erupted in what would’ve been an impressive cloud of nuclear fire, but Penny, not having much to her in way of mass, was tossed easily by the explosion, didn't get to really see it. The heat was impressive and it might’ve burned her, but the world was reduced to a swirling mess with bright yellows and dark night sky as she rolled, trying her best to land without breaking anything. Miraculously, as the fire cloud dissipated, it felt like she’d managed at least that.

Limbs shaking, she struggled to stand and turned frantically, noting the lack of noise and the flash-blindness. She tugged her goggles off and called for Danse, her own voice feeling tinny and far-away. Shoving the likeliness of busted eardrums to the back of her mind, she stumbled towards the corner cafe where she’d last seen him.

As she rounded the corner of a counter, climbing over the smoking remains of a super mutant, she saw him on the ground. The suit was singed and pocked, but he was clearly moving around inside of it. She said his name in relief, unable to really hear herself, but he noticed and the helmet turned. The insectoid eyes were terrifying for just a second before she reminded herself Danse was under them.

The foundation shook as he stood, dust kicking everywhere and knocking the few glass bottles that had managed to remain on the shelves to the floor. Feeling the broken glass crunch underfoot, but not hearing it, she ran the rest of the way towards him, reaching up for the helmet latches on the mantle of his armor.

He undid it himself when her numb fingers failed to find the latches. The helmet came off and he carelessly dropped it next to himself before bending towards her.

His big metal hands cupped her face and turned her, his mouth moving but all she heard was garbled noise, like trying to listen to the radio while under water.

“I’m fine,” she said, hoping she wasn’t shouting. She pushed his hands off and watched him speak again, the words just a bit more intelligible this time. She just shook her head and felt how _badly_ that hurt to do.

“I’m _mostly_ fine,” she amended, grabbing the crest of his armor to steady herself. “The blast shot my hearing.”

His mouth snapped shut and he frowned, carefully reaching for her again. The frown only deepened as he turned her head to look at her ears, and Penny reached up to feel out of curiosity. Her fingers came away wet and warm, blood shining darkly on her fingers in the orange light from the flaming wreckage around the diner.

“That’s not good,” she said, mostly to herself, but she saw Danse make a face at her.

He said something and she shook her head, getting from his tone that he wasn’t amused but not much else past that. Then his head snapped to the left and he called out. Penny followed his gaze and saw Theresa, the girl carefully stepping over the smoldering debris of a car that must’ve gone up after the suicider. She looked sheepish and just a little afraid, Danse frowning hard as she opened her mouth, though Penny couldn’t hear what they said.

It was hard to feel like she was inside of her body, really. The stimpak stung, but not the way it normally did, and her heart felt like it was beating so fast it hurt. Her skin was sweaty and she was left there, shivering and trying to comprehend what Danse was saying. She blinked and nodded, but that hurt too much to keep doing and dizziness set in.

As she grew more unresponsive, Danse’s body language said he was getting more agitated and afraid for her.

Theresa was looking at her worriedly, brow creased in concern. She was hovering through the entire thing, and she looked like she was apologizing, but Penelope’s hearing wasn’t back enough yet to actually hear what she was saying. Danse, now out of his power armor, kept snapping at her while he cleaned the blood off of them both and stuck Penny with a stimpak, nervously doing anything he could to help. The air was tense, and her heart started to slow down, and while she was still dizzy, feeling something closer to normal, she could feel the tension between the two of them.

It came to a head, and Penny actually managed to _hear_ it when he started yelling at Theresa.

Still feeling far too fuzzy to be normal, Penny reached out and grabbed the forearm of his power armor. Danse stopped and seemed to realize it was pointless to scream at the girl, and that she looked almost on the verge of tears anyway. He cleared his throat and gruffly apologized before taking a deep breath and saying it again, calmer this time.

She shrunk into herself and didn’t look at Danse for the rest of the night, turning her face away even when he helped her onto the higher level of an empty building to make camp for the night. By the time they’d found the half-collapsed apartment complex, Penny was feeling almost normal again, albeit her right ear was tinny and nearly useless.

Inside, Theresa kept to herself by her pack, Penny sitting with Danse while he repaired his power armor. It was quiet, though that could’ve been the remnants of the hearing loss. Aside from that, it was fine, Penny’s body sore, and she grew suspicious at the way Danse moved like he’d been injured too. After forcing him to let her check, she found an ugly swathe of bruises on his torso, and she made him take a stimpak before he did anything else. When that was done, he kissed her forehead and told her not to worry about him so much.

By the time her Pip-Boy said it was almost 11:30, things were as calm as they were going to get. They’d already eaten, and Theresa had gone off to a separate room to be by herself and Penny assumed she’d gone to sleep. Taking the opportunity, Penny broke down all their packs and sorted them, coming across the little soldier figurine she’d taken a few days ago. Looking at it, she sighed and held it tightly, turning to see Danse sitting against a wall and reading. There wasn’t a reason to hold onto it, and today had been a close call. Making a quick choice, she got up and sat down next to him.

“Hey,” she said softly, holding the toy out. “I found this.”

He put the book down and took it, turning it around. The figurine looked small in his hands. “Is there a reason you’re giving me this?” he asked, squinting at it.

“Valentine’s Day was a couple weeks ago,” she said, shrugging. “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I found this and I thought it looked like you.”

He gently touched the rippled plastic and swallowed thickly, expression unreadable. “Why give me this _now_ , then?” he asked, voice scratchy.

“I didn’t figure there was a point to holding onto it,” she said. She wiggled closer to him and put a hand on his knee, thumb lightly rubbing small circles.

“It’s a nice gesture,” he said, turning it over. Looking back at her, she saw an aching sadness in his eyes that made her almost regret giving him the toy. “Is this because of what happened earlier?”

“Not _entirely.”_ She scooted a little closer and leaned her head on his shoulder. “It just reminded me I had it.”

He made a humming noise in the back of his throat as he stared at the toy some more. A little smile crept at the corners of his lips, the same sadness in his eyes still there. Gently, she put her hand over one of his and sighed.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said, taking one more second to look at the figurine before clearing his throat and pocketing it. “How’re your injuries?”

“I’m mostly back to normal.” She turned her face into his shoulder and let her eyes close, her nose smushing against his coat. “I can’t hear as well, but it should be fine by morning.”

He sighed again and reached an arm around her shoulders, holding her tightly. “We should finally be finished with this mission tomorrow, too.”

“Excited for it to be done?”

“In a sense,” he said, voice growing a little exasperated. “We haven’t been alone in almost a month.”

She laughed a little, still spaced out from the stimpaks. “You don’t like the company?”

“It’s uncomfortable to have a stranger around.”

“Deacon wasn’t a stranger.”

“He might as well have been.” He huffed and ran his thumb over the shoulder of her coat. “You know what I mean.”

“Well,” she said, running a hand up the front of his coat. “We’re alone right _now.”_

There was a moment where he didn’t move, and she was worried she’d done something wrong before he shifted next to her. He pulled her into his lap and she straddled him, fisting her hands in the front of his coat. “Your head doesn’t hurt too much, does it?” he asked.

She shook her head, letting her eyes close as a grin spread across her face. A little laugh bubbled up and she ran her nose over his, bringing a hand to run through his hair.

“Is something funny?” he asked, voice soft.

“I just think you’re so handsome when you’re worried,” she murmured, running the point of her nose over his neck. She pressed a few light kisses along his pulse, letting her lips linger as she took in the closeness of the act.

His arms tightened around her and he burrowed his face into her neck, sighing through his nose. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

Her lips moved to the shell of his ear, leaving a few more light kisses. “We’re a good team.”

He gave a short laugh and pulled back to lean his face against hers. Taking the initiative, he kissed her first, they way he held her sweet. She broke off for a second to say something but he kissed her again, and after that, she let him, moving her hand to hold his head.

Her fingers ran through the hair on the back of his neck, the touch comforting for them both. Penny felt a bit of the broken flooring crunch under her foot as she leaned into him, Danse holding her tighter as he opened his mouth into the kiss. She smiled into it, loving the languidness and cathartic feeling of it. There was the heat of the moment and repressed desperation of not really _touching_ each other for almost a month burning under her skin, and it made her want to see how far she could push him.

She slid a hand under his coat to touch the small of his back with her bare fingers and he jumped, startled for a second before he adjusted his hold on her and bent himself to deepen the kiss. It was good to feel like they used to be, not even before the summer happened, but like they were the past few months. It always amazed her how much she was able to miss him, even when he was right there, and she fisted her hand in his hair to kiss him harder, _wanting_ him more than anything else right then.

She almost had her hand down the front of his pants before he broke away with a start, glaring to his left. She followed his gaze and saw Theresa standing in the doorway, eyes wide and face dark with embarrassment. She was frozen there for a second, looking frantically between the two of them, before she turned and bolted.

Penny sighed in frustration, hoping Danse would be willing to just pick up where they left off, but by the feeling of how much he’d tensed up, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Not in the mood anymore?” she asked with a sigh, laughing a little.

He cleared his throat and shook his head, face red like _he_ was embarrassed. “Not particularly,” he said, running a hand through his hair to smooth it down.

She took a moment to collect herself before she stood and smoothed down her clothes. “Get ready for bed. I’m gonna go see what she wanted.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I won’t take long,” she said softly, reaching into her pack and grabbing a bottle of rum. She opened it and took a drink, leaning her forehead against the bottle for a second before slinging her pack over her shoulder. “Maybe we can pick up where we left off when I get back.”

He sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “Fine. You need rest anyway, however.”

She rolled her eyes but was still touched by the concern. “You too, big guy,” she said before leaving and wandering down the hallway.

Theresa had retreated back by the small terrace attached to the living room at the end of the hallway, sitting with her feet hanging off the edge. In the distance, the Massachusetts Bay could be seen, the restored Fort Independence standing tall from the water. Her pack was sitting up behind her, Penelope’s sleeping bag already out for a cushion. Penny stood there in the doorframe and sighed to herself, looking at the girl’s back.

“If you wanted to watch, it would’ve cost you extra.”

Theresa jumped and turned, expression sheepish. “I just want to talk to you. I didn’t know you were… _with_ him.”

The snow crunched under her boots as she walked towards her, feeling tall as she stood over her sitting body. “I’m _always_ with him. The perks of having a partner.”

She sighed, the sound filled with the kind of longing Penny remembered having when she was younger. “Must be nice to have a husband.”

Penny blinked, looking down at her blankly. “I’m not married,” she said, feeling strange about saying it aloud.

Theresa’s eyes widened, skin darkening in the low light as she blushed. “I-I just assumed you were!” she said, eyes flicking away from Penny in embarrassment. “I saw the rings on your necklace and just guessed.”

“It’s fine just… move off it.” Penny shuffled a little in place and took a drink from the rum for something to do. “What did you wanna talk about anyway?”

Theresa shrugged and hunched over her knees, curling into herself. “It’s nothing.”

“Here,” Penny said, shoving the rum into Theresa’s hands as she plopped down next to her. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

She looked from Penny to the bottle for a moment before taking a drink. It only took a second before she started gagging and making a face at the burn.

“It _hurts,”_ she complained, eyes watering as she coughed.

Penny huffed and took the rum back. “What are you, 12?”

“ _No,”_ she said indignantly, still coughing a little. She wiped at her eyes and looked at her hand. “I’m 22.”

“Might as well be,” Penny grumbled. Still, she reached behind her for her pack and pulled out a Nuka Cola. Theresa watched as Penny uncapped it and drank maybe a third before pouring some of the rum in and swirling it around. She offered it to her and she hesitated for a second before taking it.

“Is this gonna hurt too?” she asked, nervously twisting it in her hands.

“I didn’t put that much in.”

Theresa pursed her lips and looked at Penny for another moment before taking a quick sip. She only made a small face, but took a second drink almost immediately. “That’s not so bad,” she muttered, picking at the label.

Penny’s lips twitched into a little smile. “You should’ve tasted it before it was flat.”

“Must’ve been good,” she said quietly, posture saying she felt guilty. She took a deep breath and let it out, running her index finger around the mouth of the bottle. “I wanna say I’m sorry for what happened earlier. I didn’t mean to get you guys hurt.”

“It’s fine,” Penny mumbled, taking another drink. “You get used to disaster in my line of work.”

"He just looked so _mad_ at me."

“He’s not mad at you.” _He’ll always just be mad at himself._

“You can go sit with him,” she said after a second, tapping her fingers on the bottle as she stared into it. “You don’t need to console me. I’m fine.”

Penny scratched at the back of her neck, wishing she had a cigarette. “I spend every waking moment with him, he’s already sick of me for today. I’m your problem now.”

Theresa smiled something small, still not looking at Penny. “Thank you for protecting me. Well, actually, for everything, I guess.”

“It’s what _you_ paid me to do,” Penny said dismissively, though her guts turned at how easy it still was for her to lie. “I’d be shit at my job if you died on my watch.”

“Still, you didn’t have to be _nice_ to me,” she pressed, turning to look at Penny now.

Catching the girl’s eye unnerved Penny in a base way, and she had to look away. “If you think I’m _nice_ , I’m sincerely scared of what you think _mean_ is.”

“You’ve protected me so far,” she said, hesitantly taking another drink. “Even when he started yelling at me, you told him to stop.”

“You don't need _protection_ from him,” she snapped immediately, irritated by the statement and her own visceral reaction to it. Taking a deep breath, Penny sighed, trying to force some of it away. “What’s your point anyway?”

“I’m just gonna miss you when this is all over,” she confessed. “I’ve gotten so used to the both of you.”

“You shouldn’t miss me.” Penny took another deep breath and tapped her fingers against the side of the bottle before taking a quick shot. Her body ached in a strange way, like she was rejecting the acceptance Theresa was giving her. There was something disconcerting about the way she relied on her and Penelope’s complacency in lying to her about who she was. It felt like she was juggling, glad to be helping the synth girl but feeling old pre-war sickness about playing along with the act.

Theresa tapped on the nuka bottle, looking embarrassed as she stared into it. “So are you gonna miss me?”

Penny looked at her out of the corner of her eye, lips grazing the mouth of the rum bottle. “Maybe. I’ve gotten used to you too, I guess.”

“That doesn’t sound like the whole truth.”

“You think you can tell when I’m lying, then?” Penny asked, feeling just a little sick at knowing that she really _couldn’t,_ not entirely at least.

She nodded. “You’re not as mean as you pretend to be, I can tell. It’s okay if you tell me how you really feel.”

“You want the _truth?”_ Penny chuckled once and took a drink, head still aching and skin itching for a smoke. “I’m gonna get you to your settlement and I’m gonna get paid, and then I’m gonna leave. Because this is my job, and how we’ve been protecting you means a helluva lot more to you than it _ever_ will to me,” she said, feeling mean but relishing in the ways this scratched at her irritation.

Theresa was startled by the harshness of her words and curled into herself, like she was too stunned to react right away. Penny waited for her to say something for almost a full minute, but when she remained silent, she stood and looked out over the half-collapsed city-scape in the distance.

“Get some sleep,” she said curtly, finishing off the rum and tossing the bottle off the edge of the terrace. “We’ll be at the settlement by tomorrow night.”

Penelope left her there and walked back to where she knew Danse was going to be, stomach feeling almost sick for being so needlessly harsh. Then again, it wasn’t so much _needless_ as it was cruel in its necessity. It was a little disgusting to herself that she’d actually enjoyed it, though.

Danse was already in his sleeping bag, their packs set in a neat pile by his head. She sighed and stripped down, shivering as she stood in the cold room in just her longjohns and t-shirt.

“What did she want to discuss?” he asked, holding the flap open for her.

“She said she was going to miss us,” she murmured, climbing into the sleeping bag with him. “And she wanted to know if I was gonna miss her, too.”

His arms wrapped around her, fitting her against his body as he zipped the bag up behind her. “What’d you say?”

Penny burrowed her face into his shoulder, sighing into his shirt. “I told her she didn’t mean anything and that she was just a job to me.”

“It’s necessary she doesn’t get attached,” he said, pragmatic and right.

“I _know_ ,” she grumbled. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t make me feel like shit.”

He huffed once. “It’s ridiculous to care what she thinks, Penny.”

“But _why?”_ she asked, moving an arm to crawl under his shirt so she could hold the small of his back. “We’re the first real memories she has, don’t you care at all?”

Danse was silent for a few moments before he sighed through his nose. “It just doesn’t matter,” he said, tone just a shade hopeless. “We’re only here to protect her, and her opinion of us doesn’t impact our mission.”

“Well, I’m just torn over it, I guess.”

“Over _what_ , exactly?”

“I like that she likes me,” Penny confessed, smushing her nose against his neck. “But it’ll be a lot easier if she doesn’t.”

“It was necessary,” he said, sounding like he could sympathize with her at least a little. He knew what having commanding power over another person felt like, knew what the distance of duty could do to a person.

Then again, knowing she’d done what she was supposed to didn’t make it feel any better.

When she woke up the next morning, sweaty with Danse snoring on top of her, Theresa was already up and sitting by her pack. She was silent and had a hard time meeting Penny’s eyes, posture slouched and upset. Guilt bubbled in her gut at seeing the girl like that, but it wouldn’t be good for either of them if she ended up getting attached to her or Danse. So the day was silent and cold, all of them moving quickly just to get the day over with.

The settlement finally came up over the horizon later that day. The entire landscape was lit orange by the setting sun, Penny shielding her eyes against the glare off the snow dunes. This far off, a few children laughing drifted over through the wind. As the sound reached them, Theresa squinted her eyes and peered at the haphazard cluster of houses.

“I think I… recognize this place,” she said like she was confused by the thought.

“You said you were coming to live here when you hired us,” Penny replied, shrugging. She heard a slight snort from Danse, but Theresa didn’t seem to notice.

“You’re right,” she said, growing more confident in her memories. “I’m coming to live with my cousins here. We’re a caravan stop.”

Penny nodded, struggling over a drift before Danse helped both girls over. For a moment, Penny stood at the top of the dune and quickly pecked the speaker on his helmet in thanks. She liked to think he blushed inside, and the garbled cough that came out of the speaker said she was right.

As they came closer to the settlement, a few shapes came into view, their edges and forms hazed by the setting sun. One of the taller ones broke away from the group and ran towards them, and once it was close enough, Penny could just make out an older woman.

“I’m sorry!” she called out, waving an arm to get Penny’s attention. “But do you have a Geiger counter?”

Penny felt her mouth pull up into a crooked grin, calling back, “No, mine’s in the shop!”

The three of them came to a stop in front of her, her eyes widening as she saw Danse in his frost-encrusted power armor. “That’s a shame,” she said slowly, looking him up and down. “I’ve been looking to buy a new one.”

“I haven’t seen one around for a while,” Penny said dismissively, rummaging in her bag for the letter they'd given her for the contact. She pulled it out and handed it to the woman, Theresa looking at it curiously as it was passed over.

The woman didn’t even open it, instead shoving it into one of the pockets of her oversized coat. Her lined face broke into a kind grin, looking to Theresa and pulling her in for a hug.

“I’m so glad you finally made it here!” the woman said, Theresa awkwardly looking to Penny for help. Penny shrugged and Danse sighed quietly in his helmet.

“I’m… Are you my Aunt Rebecca?” Theresa asked, looking stiff as she patted her back.

“I am,” she said, pulling away to look at the synth girl. “We’ve been waiting quite awhile for you to get here, your cousins are excited to meet you!”

“It took a long time to get here,” Theresa said, eyes changing like she was remembering the woman in front of her. Penny started fiddling with her Pip-Boy, uncomfortable with the way the shift made her feel.

“Yes, and why was that?” the woman, Rebecca presumably, asked like she wanted Penelope’s attention. It sounded like an accusation.

Penny glanced up and shrugged, eyes going back to the screen of her vitals. “Snow’s a wicked bitch,” she muttered.

“Well, you’re here now,” Rebecca said, not missing a beat. “We’re getting ready to have dinner, come inside and get ready.”

Penny and Danse ended up staying and eating with them, the two of them looking entirely out of place there. The feeling was uncomfortable, so much so that Danse needed to be convinced to leave his power armor and eat with them. Somehow, the stares were even worse when he out, clearly uncomfortable without the plates of metal and ceramic covering his body.

They were questioned afterward, Penny briefing Rebecca on what had happened to get the synth girl there. Danse was tense through the conversation, responding to Rebecca’s questions and suspicions curtly. The entire thing left a bad taste in Penelope’s mouth, not particularly excited about lying to the girl. As much as she understood the necessity of it, she didn’t have to like it.

That night, they were given a small shack attached to the main house on the settlement. There were a few parts in the siding where you could see outside, but the two of them patched them quickly before more snow could get in. Other than that, it was sound, if not a little cold.

Tossing her bag down on the only mattress, Penelope stretched and grinned at the sound of the rusted frame screaming. “Cozy in here, huh?”

Danse’s power armor hissed as he got out, hitting against a wall with his back. “It’s… suitable. However, I could touch both walls at once if I was lying down.”

“Well, _I_ couldn’t and that means it’s big enough.” She kicked her boots off and unbuttoned her first coat, already sweating without the windchill from outside.

“A room doesn’t need to be that large for you to be capable of that,” he said, sitting down on the mattress and pulling his bag towards himself.

A small silence fell as she sat down next to him, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged. She took her Pip-Boy off, massaging the pricks and marks it left in her skin, and set it on a stack of crates by the mattress. Taking a second to sigh, she gently put her hand on Danse’s knee.

“You seemed uncomfortable talking to Rebecca earlier,” she said after a minute.

Danse huffed, contemplating a half-empty bottle of bourbon he’d pulled out of his bag. “She asked too many questions.”

“To be fair, you were in power armor,” she pointed out.

“People have been nothing but suspect of me for the past month,” he said, opening the bottle and taking a drink. “I’m sorry if I’ve become tired of it.”

He was silent, turning the bottle around in his hands and picking at the label. With a sigh, he finished it, surprising her with how easily he managed to down the third that was left. There was the air that something was bothering him, judging how he immediately started rummaging around in his pack for another bottle.

“Is everything… alright?” she asked, figuring she was a pro at telling when someone was drinking their problems.

He sighed heavily and looked at the bottle he yanked free, considering it. “Part of the reason I agreed to come was curiosity pertaining to my past,” he confessed. “I thought seeing everything would trigger any memories I might have, but nothing occurred.”

Penny looked at him in shock for a second before she blinked it away. “You wanted to know whether or not you’d come through the Railroad, then?”

He nodded. “I figured they could account for my lack of knowledge about my true identity.”

“I… actually have something, then,” she said, body feeling awkward. She reached onto the trunk for her Pip-Boy, holding it carefully.

Danse looked at it, face growing concerned. “What do you mean?”

“When I was at the HQ, I asked Tom if he still had the files on all the synths I’d lifted from the Institute.” She grabbed her bag and groped around inside a front pocket for a moment before coming up with the dented holodisk Tom had uploaded the file to. “They actually still had your entry,” she said, handing Danse her Pip-Boy.

“You were keeping this from me?” he asked, testing the weight of the Pip-Boy in his hands.

“No!” she said quickly, thumbing the holodisk. “I just wasn’t sure if you’d want it.”

He glanced at the tape and she popped it in for him, Danse waiting for it to load. “I wanted _answers_. I suppose this will have to suffice.”

“It’s short,” she said quietly, sure he wasn’t going to like it at all.

It only took a few seconds for him to read it completely. The handful of sentences really only raised more questions than they answered, she could see that in his disappointed expression. His eyes glazed over and he read it a couple more times like he hadn’t understood it the first one. After nearly five minutes had passed, Penny shuffled close enough to him that their legs were touching.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more to give you,” she said softly, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder.

Danse looked up from her Pip-Boy and swallowed, not turning fully towards her. “It’s fine, this is… adequate.” He cleared his throat and put her Pip-Boy down, expression looking like he was collecting himself. “Thank you for retrieving the entry for me.”

“It’s what the Brotherhood had,” she offered, trying to console him. “I doubt any other information about you exists.”

He took a deep breath and cleared his throat again, still not looking at her directly. “And the Railroad didn’t possess any additional files about… _M7-97_ either?”

She shook her head. “You never passed through there, Danse.”

He fell silent at that. Handing back her Pip-Boy, he said he wanted to go to sleep. She let him lie down on the bed next to her, the sleeping bag pulled over him as a blanket. Nerves boiled in her gut and nearly made her nauseous at his reaction. Remembering the pensiveness that he'd shown when she'd jokingly brought up Tom’s offered mindwipe, it only got worse.

“Did I ever tell you why I joined the Railroad?” she asked, leaning over Danse so she could hold him.

“No,” was his muffled reply, face in his elbow.

“It felt wrong to stay in the Brotherhood after what they’d done to you.” She got in closer, arm loosely draped over his shoulder. “That on top of finding out about Shaun… I needed something that felt like I could fix what I’d done.”

Danse was silent, but she could tell he wasn’t asleep. His body was tense and his breathing hadn’t evened like she knew it did when he was sleeping. Then he said, “You're not responsible for what happened.”

“It’s always _felt_ like my responsibility,” she said. “He was my _son_. I couldn’t break out and stop them from taking Shaun, and I’ve been told I shouldn’t blame myself and that it _wasn’t_  because of me so many times, but that doesn’t make it any better.”

“What I am _isn’t your fault,_ Pen.” She felt him sigh like he was about to roll over to face her, but he stayed put.

“I _know_ ,” she said simply, brushing her fingers through the fine hairs at the back of his neck. “But it isn’t yours either, Danse.”

There were so many seconds of heavy silence, Penny was afraid he’d fallen asleep. But his breathing hadn't evened and there was a tightness in his back that gave away how upset he felt. She almost said something else, but then he rolled over to face her.

“Thank you,” he murmured quietly, voice raw and halfway emotional. He curled into her, his face pressing into her shoulder and he said it again while his fingers dig into her back. The arch of his body had the feeling of relief at being allowed to not have to be sorry for what he was.

“Hey,” she said softly, lips brushing over the feral scars on his neck. “I’m glad you came with me.”

He held her tighter for a second, taking a deep breath. “I came for you. First,” he murmured, breath warm in the fibers of her shirt.

She felt choked up by the sincerity in his words and the weight behind them. So many times she’d wondered if she’d ever been first, if there’d ever even been an _opportunity_ to be first for him, and to hear him say it pulled a heavy weight off of her chest.

 _It’s you,_ she thought as she held him, the places they were touching so warm. _It’s_ always _been you._

That night a snowstorm blew in, sleet pelting the north side of the settlement so it all settled in uneven drifts along those walls. When Penny woke up, it felt peaceful in that half-asleep state, Danse’s body warm as it enveloped her against the frigid winter air.

The time before they left felt slowed to a crawl, the room cold and her shirt still smelling like Danse. As she was dressing, she caught him watching her out of the corner of her eye. Sliding his holotags on, he looked away and she figured he must still be in the same head space he was in before he fell asleep. It would’ve frightened her more, the way he was reserved about touching her, but there was something about him that seemed _fragile_ now. So much had happened to him in the past few weeks that his resilience had to be waning.

Still though, it unnerved Penny more that she liked to think when he didn’t bend down to kiss the bridge of her nose before he got into his power armor.

They left the settlement early, almost everybody still asleep. Amazingly though, Rebecca saw them off with Theresa standing by her side, half-asleep. It felt like the older woman didn’t sleep at all, and judging by the weariness on her face, Penny was willing to bet it was at least a little true.

Theresa embraced her quickly before they left, whispering that she was going to miss her anyway, even if Penny didn’t like her very much. She shoved the girl off and told her to quit it, but her insides felt like she was ready to cry. The harshness was necessary, but she didn’t relish in it. Right next to that sick feeling, she missed Shaun, and she figured they must be related. Probably a latent maternal instinct she didn’t deserve.

They walked silently throughout most of the day, though it didn’t feel like the past few weeks had. It was calmer, though there was something distinctly different about Danse. It felt like it had after she’d nervously blurted out about the mind wipe, too contemplative and distant to be comfortable. The silent walk took them up and back into the edge of Boston, nothing particularly exciting happening. About an hour after the sun had set completely, they stumbled across the skeletal remains of a general store.

“So,” Penny started, picking up an old rusted shopping basket. “Glad to finally be done with everything?”

He scoffed. “That’s an understatement.”

“Yeah?”

“The entire operation left a bad taste in my mouth,” he continued. “Too many lies and secrets. I’ve dealth with that enough with Deacon, more was just unnecessary.”

“Ease up on Deacon,” she said dismissively. She picked up an old can of cram and considered it for a second before pocketing it.

He huffed and she heard something crash from across the store. “I don’t understand why you’re defending his behavior.”

“I see a lot of myself in him,” she started, idly combing over the rows of broken cans and smashed bottles. “We get along, and it’s easy to understand each other.”

Danse’s stomping got closer, all of the bent cans and glasses jittering from the vibrations. “It’s not right to compare yourself to him,” he said. A few cups clattered to the ground as he shimmied into the aisle with her, the grimy plastic things bouncing hollowly. He carefully stepped around them to look into the upcoming stockroom, still speaking. “He has too much to hide, it makes him untrustworthy.”

Penny picked up a crushed carton of cigarettes and opened it, pulling a few intact packs free from the inside. “What makes you think I don’t have anything to hide?” she asked, slinging her pack around to her front and stuffing the cigarettes in on a whim. The cravings weren’t as bad as they were at other times, but they still clawed inside of her guts like an itch in an unreachable place. Having them on her felt like a stupid comfort that she rationalized to herself as needing the cloth and plastic.

He was silent and she laughed once, no happiness in the sound. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

They packed up quickly, Penny choosing not to comment on Danse’s unwillingness to really touch her. It unnerved her, but she was tired of asking what was wrong, of being the one to _talk._ If he had a problem, he could tell her about it.

The day was going well, considering the morning had been tense, the sun setting a hot orange against the frozen wasteland skyline. When he thought she wasn’t looking, Penny caught glimpses of Danse turned away and looking at it. It was just a few stolen seconds, and it reminded her of when he’d stare longingly at the sky above the airport, eyes sad as he looked at the black silhouette of the Prydwen. Now there was an odd sort of pensiveness in his eyes, and she almost asked him what was wrong, but he’d already latched his helmet on. As she opened her mouth to say something, her Geiger counter started sputtering.

She looked at it, tuning it so she could see what it was sensing. There hadn’t been radiation on this road in the past and she was confused about what it could’ve been picking up.

“Radiation levels are escalating,” Danse said, voice tinny through the speaker on his helmet.

Penny looked up at the overcast orange sky, and then south as the wind picked up. As debris buffeted her, her counter spiked dramatically. “I think… it’s a radiation storm,” she said, surprised that it could be happening _now_. She’d been banking on hail from the heavy clouds hanging in the sky, but adding a hurricane of irradiated dirt to that seemed like the kind of coincidence she wasn’t willing believe could happen.

Danse rolled his shoulders, metal fingers holding his rifle better. “We need to locate shelter, then,” he said, shuffling to move behind her to block the wind.

It took thirty minutes to find an enclosed space that didn't look like it was going to cave in halfway through the storm. By the time they came across the house, Penny was soaked to the bone from the wet sleet. A few more flashes of lightning came as Danse pried the boards from the front door, the building clearly left abandoned years ago.

“I’m gonna check upstairs,” she said through chattering teeth.

“I don’t want you to go by yourself.” He looked to the side and sighed, like he was frustrated with himself.

She reached out and gently touched the arm of his power armor, wishing desperately that he was out of it. “I can take care of myself.”

Turning back to her, he glanced at the hand on his arm. “I know, and I apologize. It makes me anxious to know you might be going into danger without me there.”

“If I get into trouble, I know you’ll get there somehow,” she said, pulling her wet coat tighter around herself just to retain some heat. “Besides, your power armor might make the upper floors collapse.”

He couldn’t deny the truth there, and begrudgingly let her go by herself, trudging down the stairwell himself into the basement. She watched him go before going up and checking the second floor. It was mostly empty, with parts of it collapsed and caved in, letting her see onto the first floor. There was a staircase leading into an attic too, but the stairs stopped halfway up, the roof almost entirely caved in and only a few parts sheltered from the rain and radiation. Penny didn’t stay too long up there, instead combing the second floor for supplies.

A few pieces of furniture were dry and intact, namely a few of the dressers still standing. There was a closet that was curiously closed, and after opening it and being treated to a mass of screeching bats, she shut it promptly and resolved that it would be better staying closed. Aside from them, there wasn’t anything else that seemed to be living in the house, a refreshing change. She’d been dreading feral ghouls or a hibernating animal, but the entire place was empty.

By the time she came back down to the first floor, Danse was done. His power armor was slumped by the front door, huge and menacing in the dark. Forever unnerved by it, Penny danced around it and followed the noise she could hear, walking into the den.

“Hey,” she said to Danse, unbuckling her pack and letting it fall by the pile he’d made of his things.

“Did you find anything of use?” he asked, poking at a small fire he’d managed to start in the fireplace.

Penny sat down on a box and rubbed her eyes, watering a little from all the dust. “The attic is completely caved in, but the second floor is mostly fine. Except the family of bats that lives there.”

He looked over at her, still carefully feeding the growing flames. “Were you scratched or bit? They could be carrying rabies.”

Her face softened at the concern in his voice. “They scratched my coat, but I’m fine.” Looking at the pile of smashed wood he’d accumulated, she picked up a piece of it. It was a leg from a clawfoot table. “What’d you find?”

“The house was looted long ago, clearly, but a few undented cans remained.” He stood up and stretched, walking over to another pile he’d made by their packs. Bending down, he grabbed what sounded like glass bottles. “The former owners also had a wine cellar.”

Penny reached eagerly for one of the bottles, looking at the faded label. “Two-hundred year old booze,” she said, testing the weight of it in her hands. “That's hot. Get me a knife, I’ll open one.”

Danse grimaced. “After the RadAway.”

She pouted at him, only able to see a harshly lit side of him from the fire. “During. Final offer.”

He sighed like he was exasperated and she grinned, knowing he wasn't really. “Deal.”

Danse grabbed his bag and pulled out the metal box he kept the RadAway in and picked up a full bag. The contents sloshed around and seemed iridescent, and Penny grimaced at the prospect of getting stuck with it. Then again, it was better than radiation sickness, and after that rad storm, her Gieger counter had been going nuts.

He pricked and taped the back of her hand, hanging the bag on a nail in the wall. Sitting down next to her, he started sorting their dinner out, handing her a can of water and making her drink it. _RadAway dehydrates you, and you need to stay in good physical condition_ , he said, but it just felt like an excuse to worry on her even more than he was already. After that was done, she reached for the wine, flexing her hand and trying to ignore the feeling of the needle in favor of the exciting prospect of getting drunk.

Her excitement was cut short as she took a drink and spit it out almost instantly, though, coughing at the sour taste.

“Oh, motherfuck,” she sputtered, looking into the bottle. “It turned, that's vinegar now.”

Danse grabbed it and took a drink, making a face but swallowing it anyway. “That’s _disgusting_ ,” he said, making a face at what she could only assume was the regret of willingly drinking sour wine.

Her lips twitched into a smile, a laugh bubbling out. “I told you what it was, why’d you drink it?” she asked, taking the bottle from his hands.

“Morbid curiosity,” he offered. “I’m not particularly sure why, but it really does taste awful.”

“It’s _vinegar,”_ she said, picking at the tape. “Whatever, we’ll keep it anyway. We can use it for something.”

He huffed, most likely at least a little annoyed by her need to hold onto every single seemingly useless item, but he didn’t put up a fight. Instead, he gave her dinner, the entire thing comprised of sliced cram that he’d fried, along with the dried and pickled vegetables they’d brought with them. The setting felt domestic and calm, Penny feeling more at ease than she had in weeks.

She finished eating quickly, more tired from the RadAway than hungry at that point. Danse continued though, looking pensive as he ate. It was a serene setting, Penny feeling more comfortable than she had in a while with the sounds of the fire and the sleet banging off the roof filling the silence. Nothing felt awkward, and it could’ve been the exhaustion or the way her chest felt so indescribably _full_ , but she felt happy to be near him in the moment.

Penny picked at a loose thread in her jeans for a second before reaching out and covering his hand with hers. “I’m glad you came with me,” she said, lacing their fingers together.

Danse looked startled for a moment, caught mid-chew on a Fancy Lad. He swallowed and ran the pad of his thumb over the side of her hand. “I feel better when I’m here to protect you.”

“Isn’t this a _partnership?”_ she asked, a wry smile twisting on her face.

The corners of his lips turned up. “You watch my back, I watch yours.”

She smiled a little at him and he brought their hands to his lips and kissed them, something a little sad in the gesture. The peace of the moment felt broken when she’d noticed that, and Danse stayed silent, face contemplative as he looked at the way his thumb was rubbing circles into the back of her hand.

The quiet continued for a few minutes, the sound of the fireplace competing with the rain for what could drown out the silence. Giving up on waiting for him to breach the subject, she sighed. “Okay, I want you to tell me what’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?” he asked as he sat back down next to her.

“You’ve been quiet for the past few weeks,” she said, crossing her legs in front of herself. The back of her hand throbbed a little from the missing needle and she had to resist itching it.

He reached over and fiddled with the jagged lip of one of the cans. “I haven’t had much to say.”

“You _always_ have something to say.”

Danse was silent for a second, expression heavy with concentration as he avoided looking at her. “It felt strange to bring her to that settlement,” he said. “This entire mission has been making me consider my own origins, now that I at least know more about them.”

“Nothing’s _changed_ , Danse,” she said softly, taking her hand out of his and placing it on his knee.

“Not for you.” He cleared his throat and looked over at their bags like he was searching for something. “I can’t help but wonder how it would feel to start over like the girl we moved.”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, feeling like she’d heard him wrong.

He looked at her sideways, like he thought she wasn’t paying attention to him. “I was thinking about what it would be like if I went back and believed I was human again.”

“You can’t go _back_ ,” she said, feeling half hysterical that he seemed to be even considering the offer.

“I know that,” he snapped, frowning as he crossed his arms. Thunder cracked outside and threw harsh green light through the slats in the boarded up windows. Startled, they both leaned away from each other, Danse just a bit calmer when he spoke again. “I’ve just been thinking about how it would feel to start over.”

“And what if you found out you were a synth again?” She anxiously pushed her hair out of her face, skin prickling and itchy all over. She stood up involuntarily, legs feeling itchy and skin tight. “Would you be ready to risk going through all of that?”

“No, I—” He started, standing along with her. Stopping, he took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face. “You can’t possibly think I’d let myself live _another_ lie.”

The back of her hand throbbed and she yanked the needle out, pressing the tape back down to staunch the bleeding. “Then why even _consider_ it?”

“Because sometimes I feel like I was happier _before_ I knew!” he snapped, clearly agitated that she was reacting so extremely.

She blinked, taken aback by the severity and sureness of the exclamation. Blind panic seized Penelope then and she couldn’t find something coherent to say.

“I have to go,” she said, finally managing to sputter something. She felt on edge and too frazzled to know anything past that she _needed_ to go, not be here right then. “I can’t—I need to be alone.”

Danse yelled something after her, but she covered her ears, sure she couldn’t handle hearing anything from him right then. She grabbed her pack and stomped out of the den, wandering anxiously through the house until she got to the remnants of an office. Plopping her pack down in the dilapidated armchair, she started rifling through it, hands knowing what she wanted before she’d even realized it.

Pulling the carton of cigarettes out of her pack, she frantically picked at the plastic, peeling it off before she could come back to herself and realize this was an awful idea. The pack fell free and she reached for one of the lighters she kept and lit one of the cigarettes she tapped out. Lighting it felt like a release, the click of the igniter and the sound of the paper and tobacco catching immediately calming her before she’d even taken a drag.

She held the first pull in for almost a minute before she let it out, letting her eyes close. Aches she hadn’t realized she’d had went away and she took another drag, letting this one out slowly to savor the feeling. She knew she was going to hate herself for this later, but right now it felt like having a smoke was the only thing keeping her sane.

The cigarette was finished quickly, and by the time she’d picked a second out of the pack, she heard heavy footsteps. Hurriedly getting it in her mouth, she tried to light it before Danse found her and tried to convince her not to, but he must’ve followed the smoke, because he rounded the doorway and nearly scared her out of her skin.

“What are you doing?” Danse asked, tone hard and angry.

Penny whipped around, skin prickling with surprise and the noxious fear of being caught. “I’m havin’ a smoke,” she said around the cigarette, still clutching the lighter in her hands. She flicked it open and dragged her thumb over the igniter, body already feeling calmer from the familiar sound.

He made a face as he watched her take a drag, disappointment joining the lines on his skin. “I thought you’d _quit_ _.”_

“I’m quit- _ting,”_ she emphasized, taking another pull and relishing in the feeling of holding the smoke in her lungs. Blowing it out felt like a release, some of the anxious stress from before leaving with it. “It’s called a relapse and they happen.”

He almost reached for the pack still clutched in her hand, but she turned away. “You’re being ridiculous, there’s no reason to act out like this!” he snapped, fisting his hands in front of himself like he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Oh, really? Well, I’m an addict, I do it to feel in control, I’m stressed out and it calms me down,” she ticked off on her fingers, mumbling around the cigarette. “Take your fuckin’ pick, I have more!”

“I just expected better from you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry to disappoint,” she muttered, taking a big drag and holding it in. The stale taste was awful but the nicotine and smoke calmed her and cleared her head, so much more dependent on it than she’d thought she was. “Go do something else, I don’t wanna look at you right now.”

He was silent like he was trying to decide what to say fuming to himself. “I’ll be by the fire,” he said curtly before turning away.

The way he’d said it had been full of disappointment and it shamed her more than she could handle right then. Half-heartedly, she only managed to finish half of the cigarette before she couldn’t take the taste anymore. Crushing it against the desk yb the armchair, she just stood there and reflected back on the fight. With a clearer head, she felt absolutely ridiculous for reacting like she had, but the thought of Danse even potentially leaving again, in any way, scared her more than she could've known. Swallowing thickly and face hot with embarrassment, she picked up her pack and started back for the den, acutely aware of the scent of stale smoke that clung to her.

Danse was just sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, body lit orange by the crackling flames. There was an angry kind of tension in the curve of his body, the stoop of his shoulders. She walked up to him cautiously, listening to the house creak as the storm blew even harder against it.

“You weren’t seriously considering a mindwipe, were you?” she asked quietly, not wanting to break the odd atmosphere of the room.

He didn’t look up. “Of course not.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “I was just thinking.”

“You have too much to start over,” she said, coming to stand next to him. “I don’t… think you’d gain enough by losing who you are.”

He squinted at the flames, frowning even harder. “What do I have _now,_ then? What kind of future do I have? I’m not even _human_ , Penelope. I’m _synthetic_ , a robot, just a machine.”

She stood there, right side of her body nearly burned by the flames and she just wanted desperately to wrap her arms around him. The fact that Danse was so completely _human_ had never been contested for her; in her eyes, there was simply nothing else he could be. Even when she’d found him in the basement of Listening Post Bravo, _knowing_ that there was a little piece of plastic and wires that had a chokehold on his nervous system embedded in his brain hadn’t changed a single thing for her.

Then again, she’d never really considered what the nagging _knowledge_ that there was a permanent asterisk next to your humanity could really be like. It was a footnote that said _synthetic, engineered_ that stopped you from just continuing as you were. There was a ridiculous kind of air to a distinction like that, but knowing him as well a she did, she knew there were the darker corners of his mind that were piled high with grief from those little distinctions.

“Humanity isn’t conditional,” she said, squatting and putting her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t turn to look at her and just kept staring silently at the fire. “It’s in who you _are_ , how you act and what you feel.”

He took a deep breath and sighed through his nose. “You can’t even be sure if what I feel is my own. Who I am could just be an… _error_ in my programming just waiting to be fixed or wiped away completely. My personality and memories, everything I’m capable of feeling is just code.”

“You’re _more_ than that Danse. You’re not just code, you’re sensitive and you feel more intensely than I’ve ever seen anyone manage.” She climbed into his lap, hands on his shoulders, and he looked away. “You bleed when you get shot, and I know how you _need_ to protect the people you care about, and sometimes you _snore_ so loudly you wake me up.”

“I used to have a _purpose_ , but now I know all of that was a lie, that I was probably just planted to promote fear and paranoia in the ranks.” He swallowed thickly and ran a hand through his hair. “After seeing that girl to her new life, it feels like I’m _less than_ nothing.”

She grabbed his face in both of her hands, forcing him to look at her eyes. “You can’t _be_ _nothing_. It’s _impossible_ for you to be nothing.” _Sometimes it feels like you’re_ everything _to me._

His lovely brown eyes were wide and shiny in the highlights from the fire that managed to reach him. Her body cast a hard shadow over him, face shocked like he hadn’t expected her to be so direct and vehement in her assertion. Gently, she pulled him against her and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close enough to hurt with the bruising strength in his body. His breathing gradually became more erratic, emotional and overwhelming, like the entire situation just became too much for him. His face pressed into her neck, holding her so tightly she could feel every single shudder of his body as he shook.

The tears were unexpected, but she figured she should’ve seen them coming. Overwhelmed by the intensity of the situation, he just cried into her. In that moment, holding and rocking with his breathing just to try and soothe him, she felt closer to him than she ever had before.

“You mean too much to me to be nothing,” she murmured, holding him as hard as she could. The emotional rawness in him set off something awful inside of her too, reopened those aching wounds in her chest.

Afterwards, she climbed off of him and turned around to give him some privacy. She sat close enough to the fire so she wouldn’t freeze, but far enough that she wouldn’t have to look at anything save what got cast in the pink light from her Pip-Boy. Soon enough, it didn’t even feel like her eyes were open. The green darkness blended together into formless shapes that were lit for a split second by sickly yellow lightening until she felt Danse sit down next to her.

It was a strange silence, the kind left over after an admittance of something. Other times, Penny would’ve satisfied the need to force guilt onto someone else and stayed in it, but she was tired of making Danse feel guilty for telling her how he felt. Giving him something from herself felt right, just then.

“You know, when I found you in Listening Post Bravo, I was afraid I was too late,” she started, wiggling her toes inside of her boots as she rested her chin on her knees.

“What do you mean?” Danse asked. His voice sounded croaky and he cleared his throat.

Distantly, she heard thunder rumble as it followed the lightning. “I was afraid you’d killed yourself already. You were only recording your suicide tape when I finally got to you, though.”

“I don’t…” Danse said, fumbling for words. It was almost a first for him, to be grasping for something to say. “I’m not at risk anymore. When you found me I hadn't been thinking clearly for days, and you convinced me it wasn't the only solution.”

“It’s fine, I get why you almost did it.” Penny took a deep breath and ran a hand down her face. “When I got out of the vault, it just… felt like too much. Every night I’d wake up, convinced I was having a nightmare and then remember Nate was dead. For a few weeks, all I could think about was killing myself, but I just kept pushing it off until the next day.”

“I’ve heard you say that before,” he murmured, almost like it was to himself and he was berating himself for not recognizing the weight behind the words sooner. “You’ve told numerous people to take it one day at a time.”

She pulled a half-smile and ran a hand through her hair. “Sometimes it’s just the only thing you can do when you’re in that kind of place.”

“You have to know that things will never get that bad again,” he said, voice suddenly growing resolute, like he was promising her happiness. “No matter what happens or happened, it will never be bad enough for you to take your own life.”

“Things _felt_ that bad.” Penny sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “Knowing they aren’t that bad doesn’t stop it from feeling that way. I wanted to die because my life was over and it felt like my body hadn’t caught up.

“Can you tell me how it felt?”

“I felt… calm about it,” he said carefully, choosing his words. “But I was desperate for something to change, or for it all to be just a big mistake.” He cleared his throat, and she peeked at him out of the corner of her eye to see him red in embarrassment. “I never suspected you knew about it.”

She shrugged and picked at the hem of her shirt. “It’s not something you just _bring up.”_

“You don’t have to keep talking if it makes you uncomfortable, Penny.”

“I’m fine with talking about it,” she said. “I _wanna_ talk about it.”

He took a deep breath and leaned his head back against the wall. “Okay, then. Why did you want to?”

She pulled her knees in closer and pushed her hair behind her ears. “It felt like the thing to do at the time,” she said, hugging her legs tightly. “I don’t… _belong_ here, as much as I keep trying to fix everything. I can’t put Massachusetts back together again because I’ll never fit into place here.”

Danse put a hand on her knee, thumb rubbing gently against her. “I had no idea you’d felt like that. I regret not asking you about your first experiences in the wasteland sooner.”

“There's a lot you don't know about me, Danse,” she said with a slight chuckle, mouth pulling into a watery smile. “If you're around, though, I could definitely tell you all of it.”

Realization seemed to dawn on his face. “This is about what I said regarding the mindwipe.”

Penny nodded quickly. “Theresa did it because she didn’t have anyone and wanted to start over,” she said, grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. “I didn’t end it because I had to find Shaun and then I _found_ other things to live for. I had to stay alive to protect my son and I grew a place here past that, in Sanctuary and new people who cared about me.”

“I don’t want to start over anymore,” he said, voice croaky. He sighed through his nose, eyes softening as he looked at the way their fingers looked together. “I wouldn’t want to go to a new life where I didn’t remember _you.”_

Her lips twitched into a smile, the expression feeling soft and sad on her face. “I guess I just should’ve asked you how you felt, huh?” she said, rubbing circles into his skin with her thumbs.

He cleared his throat and nodded, continuing to just look at their hands. “Why tell me this now?” he asked, thumbs softly running over her palms.

“I want you to know more about me,” she said. “Sometimes, it feels like you put me on a pedestal. It’s fine for _you_ , but it’s too easy for me to fall off.”

“I’ve never…” he said, trailing off. Taking a deep breath, he looked at her face and there was a stern resolution in his eyes. “I’ve never had to confront anything about myself like I have in the past year, and I believe I took your support for granted. Ever since I discovered the truth about myself, I’ve felt like I’ve been panicking, trying to understand how I feel so I can then act accordingly. But I just…”

The sentence trailed off, his face creased in concentration as he tried to organize the best way to say how he felt. He took a deep breath and she squeezed his hand for encouragement, her body hungry for him to open up so completely to her. Looking at her with his sad brown eyes, she figured there was so much under the surface that she’d only suspected was there.

“I’ve spent so long trying to work out what my own humanity is and if it exists, that I think I forgot that you had it as well.” Danse paused for a moment, his eyes flicking down to where he still had her hand in both of his, his fingers softly tightening. “I hadn’t considered how my dismissive attitude towards my own memories would make you feel because I didn’t truly think I would go through with it. For me to believe that you wouldn’t be upset by it was selfish, and I apologize. I’m just… trying to make sense of the ways my future has changed and how to move on.”

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes from just how _genuine_ he sounded. Clearing the tightness out of her throat, she let out a nervous laugh before turning away and pushing her hair behind an ear. “Would it make you feel better if I said I didn’t know what I was doing anymore either?”

His lips pulled into a small smile, face clearly grateful for a little levity. “It does.”

She put her other hand over his, squeezing lightly. It was tender and kind, and Danse looked like he was caught staring at their hands, falling into a contemplative state again. Cleared her throat, gently, she wiggled a little closer to him.

“I like who you are, Danse,” she said, letting go of his hand so she could cup his face. “I think you can like who you are, too.”

He looked at her and sighed, eyes soft for her. Leaning in, he kissed her, moving his hands to hold her. It was gentle and missed, Penny’s heart nearly aching for how much she cared about him. The entire night had felt stressful and she wanted to wash it off, needed to feel like she could just be with him without being so… _afraid_ anymore.

Pulling back, she brought her hands up to cup his cheeks. “You said you were staying,” she said softly, thumb idly brushing over his cheek as she held his big face.

“I _am.”_ He grabbed her hands and pulled them off of her face, just holding them. She sat back down next to him and he sighed, lightly grazing her knuckles with his thumbs. “Why do you keep asking?”

“I can’t help it,” she said, moving her hands so she could gently play with his fingers. “I’m just so tired of losing everyone.”

“You found your son,” he pointed out. His hands moved to hold hers again, calloused fingers wrapping around her small hands. “You got justice for your husband as well.”

“It’s not just them,” she said, looking at where he was holding them. It felt like he was dancing around saying _We found each other again,_ and she didn’t like it. There was a need inside of her to press him, see how well he understood her. “Does killing every super mutant you see feel like justice for Cutler?” she asked, eyes flicking back to his face.

Danse looked at her strangely, like he was startled and upset by the question. “Eradicating those abominations is a service to mankind.”

“But is it _just_ about justice for him?” she pressed. “Do you ever wonder who you’d be if it’d just never happened? If you’d never killed him at all?”

His face twisted a little, expression confused. “It was what my training prepared me for. I… am unsure what _I_ could’ve done.”

“When you told me how much you hated super mutants, I felt like I really understood you.” Penny squeezed her eyes shut, pushing them painfully into her skull with her knuckles. “I didn’t know what _I_ could do, but I knew I needed to kill Kellogg because I hated him for ruining my life.”

She heard Danse and shuffle around, like he was running a hand through his hair. “Why even bring this up?” he asked, sounding frustrated.

“I just don’t know at what point it stops being justice and starts being revenge,” she confessed, pulling her hands away from her face to look at the spray of shrapnel scars on them. Danse was quiet, and she didn’t like the heaviness of the silence. “Neither felt like enough, though. You know?” she asked, half nervous.

Danse took a deep breath and nodded. “I understand. Revenge felt good,” he said after a minute. He sighed and leaned back against the wall, looking up at the busted rafters. “But it didn't feel like I believed it would. That's the most intolerable part.”

“You’d think it would make you feel better, at peace with what happened.” She scooted next to him and leaned against his shoulder, Danse immediately lifting an arm to let her huddle into his side. “It’s supposed to feel like closure, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt closure.”

He pulled her in closer and rested his chin on her head, his stubble prickling her scalp. “Is this going anywhere?”

“I had a _point,”_ she huffed, prickling a little at his tone. “I keep asking because I’m just… _worried_. I’ve been grasping for anything to drive myself for over a year now, and so much of it feels like a mistake.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. His hand rubbed up her shoulder, and she was grateful for the comfort in the gesture.

“My brother, my parents, Nate. My _entire family._ It’s worn me down, made me feel so…” she said, her hands balled into fists in front of herself. With a deep breath, she opened her hands and sighed, looking at her worn and scraped palms. “ _Helpless.”_

The admission felt disgusting to herself, body sick at the way she was. She was tired and paranoid, so afraid of being left that it drove nearly everything she did. So many times she’d looked at who she’d been two years ago before the bombs fell and felt detached from that girl, but her past was what _made_ her, and even though she wasn’t as sharp or together or _her_ as she’d been, at her core she was built off of nasty fears of abandonment and failure.

“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve met,” Danse said, sounding sure of himself. She jumped, startled out of her thoughts a bit by him as he placed a hand over one of hers, lacing their fingers together..

Her mouth twitched a little, almost a smile but not quite. “Thank you,” she said, voice croaky. “It means a lot, coming from you.”

He sighed, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “Do you want to go to sleep, now?”

“Maybe,” she said, wiggling into his lap completely so she could lean her head against his chest. “Are we alright, right now?”

She heard him take a deep breath, felt his chest expand and the feeling was so comforting she could’ve cried. “We’re alright,” he said.

The way he said it, she was willing to believe it.

They smothered the fire and zipped their sleeping bags together, balling their coats up for a pillow. Pen got in first, Danse following her and lying nearly on top of her. The crushing heat of his body made her feel safe and wanted, lulling her into a state of welcome ease, especially after how stressful the night had been. After almost ten minutes of just hold each other, Danse cleared his throat and tightened his arms.

“Earlier, in the heat of the moment, I said I was happier before I knew the truth about myself,” he said swallowing thickly, playing with her hair. “Looking back, that was a lie.”

“What do you mean?” she asked quietly, letting her eyes close.

“ _You_ make me happy.” He sighed and pressed his face into her hair. “Happier than I thought I could be. Happy enough to make me terrified of being alone again.”

She tightened her arm and let her fingers dig into his back as he pressed her face further into his chest. “You make me happy too,” she murmured, muffled by his shirt.

After a few minutes of silence, Penny’s eyes grew heavier. The night had been eight different kinds of emotional, and to say she was tired was an understatement.  Even Danse’s breathing had evened and she thought he’d fallen asleep. Had he not started speaking softly, she would’ve slipped under too.

“You mentioned you had a brother,” he murmured into her hair, the words warm against her scalp.

She jumped a bit, startled by the suddenness of the statement. His hands rubbed up her back soothingly and she settled down quickly. “I don’t remember that much about him. Just… birds and late-night hallways.” She sighed, pressing her face into Danse’s chest. “I look like him, though. We had a lot of pictures of him hanging up in my house growing up.”

“Did something happen to him?” he asked. The words sounded guarded, like he already knew the answer but wanted to ask anyway.

Penny nodded, not particularly plagued by the memory. The incident was such a deep part of what made her who she was, _telling_ someone felt hard, but _talking_ about it was some strange sort of easy. “He was shot during a home invasion when he was 14,” she said, clearing her throat. “I was almost three.”

There was a silence after she spoke that could’ve been awkward, had she been with anyone else. With Danse, it was easier, warmer, made her feel safe as he held her.

“What was his name?” he murmured, hands gentle on her back.

“Michael,” she said, the name feeling strange in her mouth. It had been years since she'd last said it, or even really thought about him. A small smile started pricking at her lips as she thought about the muddy memories she had of him, a time when her parents used to smile. “It’s Shaun’s middle name.”

“Thank you for telling me about him,” he said. There was a heated reverence in his words, something in them that made it sound like he wasn't just speaking about this little part of her past.

“I just wanted you to know more about me.” She wiggled closer to him and struggled to free her hands from between their bodies so she could hold his face. “You should know why I act the way I do.” _Why I couldn't stand to lose you again, why I’m so tired of just_ losing _at all._

Danse sighed, his eyes closing as he leaned his forehead against hers. “After so many months, it still feels like I learn something new about you every day.”

“You’re full of surprises yourself, big guy,” she said, voice sleepy and heavy. She wiggled closer, leaning her head to press a quick kiss to his lips.

His eyes didn’t open as he followed her lips, leaning in to kiss her again. It was soft and slow, full of some sort of emotion she couldn’t nail down. It felt like he was trying to hold them as close together as possible and showing her how much he wanted her at the same time. It was encapsulating and romantic, the kind of kiss she surely would’ve loved more if she’d been more awake to push him further.

Pulling away, she opened her eyes to see him watching her. An odd sort of soft sadness sat in his eyes, eyebrows drawn just a little as he looked at her. His fingers traced the dip of her hip, making warm little whorls on her skin.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, just loudly enough for her to hear and her heart just _shattered_ at the rawness in his voice. There was a base kind of aching sadness in the sound, so emotional and heartfelt that she felt her throat tighten up.

 _I think I love you,_ she thought to herself, biting her lip as she looked at his eyes. The revelation almost hurt, overwhelmed her as she lied there. It felt like she couldn’t remember when she’d _stopped_ loving him, but now it smacked her and she was sure that’s why it ached so badly to hear him sound the way he did, sad like he didn’t deserve her. Not knowing what else to do, she held him tightly, let him burrow his face in her neck.

“You’re gonna be here when I wake up, right?” she asked, holding onto him harder. It was the stress of the situation compounding on her incessant fear that made her ask. It made her so afraid that she hated that part of herself, but she doubted she’d ever be strong enough to not give into it.

He nodded into her shoulder, the crooked bridge of his nose pressing into the muscle there. He said something that might’ve been _Always,_ but it was too quiet and she was too tired to really tell.

After a few moments, she moved her head so she was by his ear, brushing the point of her nose over the shell of it. The wind outside had picked up and made the building shudder. Danse held her tighter in response to the sound and her moving, softly asking if she was alright. With that promise of him being there too, she figured she was just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy howdy. I'd love a comment or some feedback after a chapter this huge, so if you want leave one, I'd really appreciate it!


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